Sleepknot? Slip… Not? Give me a second I’m still workshopping this…
[Video]
[4.00]
Julian Axelrod: Before I listened to this song, all I knew about Sleep Token was that they were a prog metal band who wore Slipknot masks and worshipped a fake deity called Sleep. So imagine my shock, disgust and delight when I discovered they sound exactly like Bastille. Bad song, great bit.
[3]
Nortey Dowuona: What a grand design, that perfectly weighed sword hanging above Damocles’s head. It should’ve been a badly mangled one, a weak wooden frame, an unbalanced blade. But it was a normal, acceptable sword swinging above his head. He was probably of weak temperament, one used to flattery and persuasion, subtlety and finesse, not the ham-handed, blunt violence that truly acquires power. But finesse is a firm string in the right hand, in one used to wielding power across the throat during the navy hours, not in the bright amber light of battle. Any war one can wage with finesse is bound to crumble into a morass of heavy handed symbolism, crashing and heaving but breaking the shields and piercing the armor a soft croon cannot. Maybe Damocles won’t hit you back because he knows he will never reach high enough to grasp the sword, seize power, menace his own courtiers with its tip. But Sleep Token are not so cowardly.
[8]
Ian Mathers: Reading fans talk about Sleep Token and their music and how important it is to them is truly moving. There are clearly a lot of people out there for whom this band means a lot. That’s great! On the other hand: what the fuck is this shit.
[3]
Jel Bugle: This starts of sounding like a lot like Imagine Dragons or Alex Warren. It does get going a bit, but there is no tech death flair here, no gurgle core dynamics, no proper blistering guitar solo, not even a hint of a blast beat! Maybe I’m the problem, and I’m just old, and this is just new and different. Sure it can be metal, that’s fine. Perhaps there is some deep meaning, some kind of codex to unlocking Sleep Token?
[3]
Harlan Talib Ockey: Originally considered just saying “look at my lawyer heavy metal, dawg, I’m going to jail”, but then thought it wouldn’t be fair to judge this solely by whether it rocks. Unfortunately, it’s too stone-faced and well-mannered to be successful as a pop ballad either.
[2]
Claire Davidson: Hoping for a well-produced rock song in the 2020s feels about as fruitful as wishing on a star, so I was skeptical, to say the least, upon noticing that a song by an actual metal act had appeared on this month’s docket. Rest assured, while “Damocles” is primarily a piano ballad, when the guitars are eventually integrated into the mix, they reliably sound terrible, a sludge of formless noise lacking any real texture, body, or dynamics. I’ll admit to being momentarily impressed by some of the song’s lyrical turns of phrase, if only because, speaking as an American, the question “Who will I be when the empire falls?” feels more pertinent with each passing day. Still, I can only give Sleep Token so much credit in that realm, because outside of a few marginally inventive metaphors, “Damocles” is a mostly standard narrative of questioning one’s own strength, not helped by the second verse that sees the narrator making flimsy excuses for not truly pushing themself. (“I can’t always be killing the game!”) Really, the entire affair feels decidedly risk-averse, from the notably prim pianowork to the morose restraint from the vocalist known as Vessel, all qualities that are hardly warranted by a song supposedly so preoccupied with existential questions.
[4]
Mark Sinker: Back when I was growing up people couldn’t really sing — this was the excitement and freedom of rock! And later for a while it was exciting to discover and enjoy that many people could sing (and always could, but we hadn’t been paying attention). And now for a fair time being able to sing has stopped meaning much at all: you have to listen for other things once more. Here for example you can listen for a world-record bid in mixed metaphor.
[3]
Alfred Soto: A dude who sings, “I know these chords are boring” is asking for it, I know, but in a song that stitches together several purple metaphors and the latest psychobabble, the line comes across as a plea, i.e. “Please excuse these dull piano lines and my mush-mouthed vocals.” Give a man a mask and he’ll play the sleuth.
[4]
Taylor Alatorre: I wanted to do a Sleep Token review that was mainly about the music and not the anonymity, but how does one do that when the song is built around lines like “I can’t always be killing the game” and “Who will I be when the empire falls”? Aside from some gymnastic drum fills toward the end, “Damocles” doesn’t really scan as “falling empire” music, even within the narrow context of the alt-metal hype machine. It’s more obviously an effort to sustain and grow that empire through the use of piano recital sentimentalism and chords that even Vessel admits are “boring.” They claw back their genre-warping ambitions in order to get the seriousness of the message across: behind the masks and the ARGs and the clickbait mythology, they really do feel just like we do, man. It works, in the sense that I’m kind enough to believe them. But Bring Me the Horizon, their more taste-agnostic predecessors in genre-warping Britmetal, have shown that you don’t necessarily have to claw back anything to make that message heard.
[5]
Will Adams: There’s irony in a song that invokes the Greek mythological figure who is one thread from losing everything as a metaphor for the precarity of the music industry playing it this safe. The pretty piano arpeggios, middle-of-the-road metal drops and anonymous frontman Vessel’s weepy performance suggest less the peril of an empire falling than, say, a tepid album review.
[5]