I figured something out about sleep token I'm going to break it down for you this week if you are a super fan this one might make you angry and by that same token no pun intended if you're a hater this one also might annoy you but if you're interested in the truth keepWatching welcome metalheads I'm the host of heavy metal philosophy and writer for metal digest John barbus make sure you stick around to the end of the episode for this week's riff of the week this week we're getting a new sleep token album and I'm tackling the question that'sBeen on everybody's mind all year long who is sleep token now in this episode I'm not going to try and investigate their actual real life identities that's not what I'm interested in I'm interested in how did they blow up like this what's the thing with sleep tokenWhy did they become so popular all of a sudden what is the deal now sleep token wasn't completely unknown before they blew up this year but if you're the kind of metal head that I am you had no reason to know about him until they blewUp the way they did this year and what does that mean am I keeping them out of the metal community no that's not what I'm saying I'm saying I'm into like Cannibal Corpse Opeth you know bloodbath that kind of metal and a band like sleep tokens just not going to enter my radarI'm not gate keeping them saying they're not metal I'm saying that's not the kind of music for me so I have no reason to know who they are but boy this year they exploded so much there was so much hype and chatter and discussion about themYou can't help but hear about them so then you see these guys on these masks and you hear about their weird lore and background and you become curious what's going on and then you hear the music and you go wait what if you're unfamiliar if you haven't heard them for some strangeReason then you probably haven't been on the internet but I'll describe it for you it's very atmospheric and Moody music and it's often about love and relationships and occasionally there will be a metal core Genty breakdown that's really crushing but most of the time it's kind of an r b soundingAtmospheric music and that's really not what you would expect me to describe when I'm talking about a band that's blowing up in the metal scene now is it if I describe their look and their lore without describing their music it would sound totally metal so they wear masks they're completely Anonymous nobodyKnows who they are they wear cloaks paint themselves black it's very metal looking it's very black metal looking which might be the only genre that they don't touch anyway supposedly the lead singer had a dream about a God that he calls sleep and now he calls himself vesselAnd his sole purpose is to evangelize the message of the God's sleep get more people to worship the deity sleep and he is merely a vessel for this deity's will therefore his monarcher of vessel that sounds metal as but then you hear this and that does not sound metal notEven remotely and that's where all the online chatter comes from that's where all the debate comes from why is sleep token so huge all of a sudden some people might say it's because of the pop some people might say because it's accessible some people say it's the sexSome people say it's the lore and the imagery and I wanted to find out for myself so this week I listened to all their music and did as much research as I could not that there's a lot of information but here we go the first first of all I want to absolutely ruleOut the lore and the imagery I do think that that's helpful I do think that the mystery adds a lot of intrigue that people get interested in but that's very Niche that's that's something that's going to interest a certain segment of the population if you talk about a guy being an avatar forSome sort of Eldritch Horror I don't think that's going to be very relatable to the masses and by the way imagine the balls you gotta have when you first start this band to go play some Pub somewhere in the UK in front of 12 blokes and go yo I am the embodiment ofA otherworldly deity my name and my identity doesn't matter I'm here to get you to worship this God I don't know about you but if I'm in a bar somewhere and somebody gets me that stick and I've never heard of them before there's been no Preamble or introduction I'm going toLook at my friends and be like no dog but their music is excellent it has several elements that we'll talk about in a bit that is undeniable so maybe those first couple of gigs that had to break down some personal barriers but maybe at the end of the night theAudience was like I mean that was good but at the end of the day it has to be about the music the music has to be good I'm not going to buy the idea that it's these characters this image and this lore that's drawing in millions of people you know they're basically likeThe gorillas for goth chicks you know you've got these caricatures and you've got this background and this ongoing story and the universe that they live in but are people fans of the gorillas because of that or is the music good first and then the gorillas image andStory is just icing on the cake well if it's not the image in the lore then the next thing that people will say is well it's got a lot of pop in it it's got a lot of r b in it it's very accessible and I don't think that's it either IMean it certainly doesn't hurt being accessible is always going to help your cause when it comes to appealing to the masses but I just don't think that's it because as Standalone pop songs I just don't think they're very good at being pop songs they're great songs butPop songs are direct and they have a very certain structure and an excitement to it and and lift and the slow parts of sleep token don't really do that I mean they're they're non-heavy songs just drag on and on and it's dreary I mean it's it's very beautiful don't get me wrongBut you just you just don't get that many sad pop songs and here I'm listening to one of the singles that's coming on the new record this Friday called do you wish that you loved me and it's almost there it could easily be aPop song with kind of a little bit of a different music behind it and a little bit of a different delivery I mean this could easily this do you wish that you love me repeated part this could easily be a Maroon 5 song Maroon 5 would makeIt happy and bouncy and they would be lift during that part sleep token doesn't do that this is like instead of celebrating and partying this is talking about a damaged relationship which is kind of their overall theme like most of the relationship stuff and their songs it's about kind of toxic relationshipsOr relationships that are no good for you I mean of course pop music does have a lot about toxic relationships and breakups but the music is coded in sugar to make it more palatable it's not it's not sad and that leads me to my next Point these long slow drawn outAtmospheric songs are these the songs that are causing sleep token to have breakout success I'm sure they're hardcore fans love those songs I'm sure somebody in the comments right now is like no you're wrong this song is a work of art absolutely it is a work of artIt's not a pop song it's my point what are the songs that were breakout hits for Sleep token the heavy ones alkaline really caused them to break out get them to that very respectable 300 000 monthly Spotify listeners Mark and then this January when they released their newest singles and you've gotSongs like the summoning that really launched them into the stratosphere and that's kind of the opposite of the way that most metal bands do most metal bands do their really heavy stuff and then they release a nice clean soft one a radio hit that launches themBut not sleep token sleep token did all of their nice stuff and then the heavy ones launched them and I think there's a very specific reason for that the heavy songs are exciting the heavy songs have lift to them they build to a crescendo the clean ones not so much so if it'sNot the image in the lore and it's not the accessibility and I don't think that they're a good pop band then it must be the lyrical content and now I think we're getting somewhere yes I think the lyrics is where it's at because in my opinion the music part isNot really that special now that's a very controversial statement let me explain because I don't mean it the way you might think I think a lot of their songs are excellent and that's what's most important the song itself and I do think it's amazing the way they're ableTo so seamlessly blend so many different styles and genres but my point is if you look at the individual components there's nothing there that's like mind-blowing the clean drone Parts they're atmospheric but there's nothing there where I'm like I can't believe what I'm hearing and the heavy PartsWhile they do a very good job of making them head banging you know exciting great heavy Parts when you analyze them as a guitar player there's nothing being played on guitar tour that I haven't heard from another Genty metal core band you know they're good riffs they're notRiffs but I'm like oh my God I cannot believe this riff I'm hearing I have to go and learn how he did that this band would never be accused of being a virtuoso technical metal band and there's nothing wrong with that my point is the music itself isn't what's drawingPeople in it is merely the vehicle for what's actually drawing people in and that's great at the end of the day like I said the songs are what's most important and they write great songs the one exception to that that I would make is vessel's voice vessels singing ability and voice isIncredible I am blown away by not only the tones that he's able to create and the range of his voice but specifically his delivery the way he's able to incorporate his breath a lot of times when singers are sort of breathy for lack of a better term it sounds annoyingIt's nasally and bad but when vessel does it it's sexual this band has gotten a lot of comparisons to the Deftones and I did a podcast a while back asking why the kids these days are getting back into the Deftones and people explain to me it's because they're sexy which I don'tKnow man maybe it's because I'm a dude I've never thought of the Deftones as being sexy I've never thought of my own summer or shut up and drive is something that I want to lay pipe to but you know I'm a boomer I don't get it anymore butSleep token on the other hand I could get down with this this definitely does sound sexy to me and it's not really vague at all and that's where I get to my point really kind of a trick you see all of this hubbub about they're behind the masks and they're Anonymous andTheir identity doesn't matter and all the lore you know they do args when they release new singles and you know what does the runes on his masks mean and who is this deity sleep and you know who does what I don't think any of that really matters at the end of the dayOther than it adds a bit of mystery and Intrigue to the actual draw which is quite simply sex you know you could say uh it's about love right that's what I mean at the end of the day sleep token songs are love songs and here's where people will sayOh no that's not true a lot of these songs are really about his relationship vessels relationship that is to the God's sleep it's not about mundane relationships and I disagree I think it is a trick I think that it's open to interpretation because of the way thatThe lyrics are written you can kind of put your own spin on it but at the end of the day these songs are love songs I mean what's the thing that's blowing up on Tick Tock right now let's go with these lyrics all right oh and my loveDid I mistake you for a sign from God or are you really here to cut me off or maybe just to turn me on because these days I would be lying if I told you I didn't wish I could be your man or maybe make a good girl bad now of courseThat's just one song but I listen to a lot of sleep token songs this week and they're all pretty much like that you know there is some religious allegory going on with a lot of these songs and so there's where you can make the argument that it's reallyAbout his relationship with the god sleep but I just think that that's a handy little vehicle you know this whole story about being the Avatar of some sort of Eldritch entity some sort of elder god I think it is a very nice way to create some mystery and Intrigue andCredibility around the fact that you're doing metal and every one of your songs is a love song it's pretty brilliant actually because that's really a underserved Market in the metal Community there's not really many bands that are specializing in love songs when it comes to extremely heavyMetal you know back in the 80s we had the hair metal era and there was a lot of love songs there but you know of course hair metal fell out of favor metal got more and more extreme and it was considered soft to write love songs or maybe you have onePower ballad on your record but the rest of your songs have to be hard so metal bands got away from doing love songs and what about the religious allegory I just think it makes for Good lyrics I think that sleep token is great for those type of people that say I'mNot religious I'm spiritual and I think that the God's sleep is really the representation of vessels desires I really think that this whole project is a very jungian Shadow complex you know young had that idea about the shadow which is this part of your psyche that desires things that you're really notSupposed to and it's suppressed by society and there's a longing and an obsession in this music the character vessel really Sims a lot for his love interests or if you will The Entity sleep and that's where I kind of started to figure it out a long time ago a friendOf mine says to me you know all these Christian rock songs are just love songs to Jesus I was like damn you're right they are you could take Jesus's name out of it and put somebody else's name in and it would be just a regular old love song uh contemporary Christian rock isTerrible anyway the point is if you did do that it wouldn't it would be kind of creepy a little bit if you took some of these songs and you put somebody else's name in it and had that sort of behavior you'd go oh yo youNeed to kind of calm down a little bit this might not be love this might be Obsession and look not to pick on the Christians because once I had that idea in my head and I look at Behemoth music I'm like oh yeah these are just love songs to Satan doctorSo yeah that's my conclusion I don't think that it's about the image I don't think it's because they're accessible and Pop I think it's because it's about sex and it's about love and relationships and it's about that archetype of a tortured psyche you knowWhen you look at a lot of the books that women in book clubs read it's always the male character that's got this tortured Soul he's really kind of a badass a little bit but he's got a soft spot for the main character and treats that woman like a princessThat's the need that sleep token is serving and I'm not saying that in a negative way again that is an underserved Market that metal has neglected and I think that might be why those old dudes and Deftones are resonating with the Zoomers because again that is an underserved Market inThe heavy kid Outcast Community tell me what you think I'm sure there's some people that are far more experts on the lore than I am that can tell me all the things that I've missed because I'm just a casual of course of course or you might be a hater and you'll beLike yeah you're looking too much into it let's have a dialogue in the comments if you're listening Audio Only on my social media is in the description I want to hear your theories why did sleep token blow up so much me personally I think we metal ads may be a little hard upMaybe a little sexual tension in the community that's what I think what do you think but now let's talk about the Riff of the week and I'm gonna go with chokehold because again about sex and it's a cool riff I like this that's why it's going to be the Riff of theWeek click right here if you're on YouTube to get another great episode of heavy metal philosophy but most importantly read philosophy listen to metal I love you foreign [Applause]