12 essential Sleep Token songs you need to know

“Don’t get lost in genres,” Vessel warned in one of Sleep Token’s only interviews. “They’ll only disorientate you. Music is for everyone.” Indeed, the band’s output is as hard to pin down as they are. If this is a “window into the waiting room of my mind”, then, it’s a turbulent yet complex place. Every fan will have their favourites, but we’ve rounded up and unpacked 12 of Sleep Token’s most significant songs…

Every so often, Vessel can have some rather violent thoughts. They’re brought to the fore on this fan-favourite cut from Sleep Token’s second EP, which is foreboding in a notably simplistic way as Vessel is left singing with little instrumentation behind him. There’s nowhere to hide from the barbarism he sings about, centering on him holding a woman captive, envisioning what it would be like to ‘make her eat tape in the bathroom mirror’. Interpreted by some as a previous significant other of Vessel’s, he’s making a disturbing sacrifice, ‘building you a kingdom’, to Sleep. Its slow burn builds to a disarming-sounding climax as piano notes dance over the top of its riffs. Sleep Token have rarely been darker than this.

This is the first song you hear in Sleep Token’s trilogy of albums, foregrounding the cyclical nature of Vessel and Sleep’s relationship – the sun sinks, Sleep appears, Vessel bows in reverence. It’s subtle and ethereal in sound yet still overflows with a sense of majesty, as if it’s being sung while Vessel’s kneeling at an altar. Along with The Offering, it’s one of the few songs where the evidence of the disorder within Vessel and Sleep’s relationship is not especially apparent, but perhaps it does sidle its way in when Vessel sings, ‘I know for the last time / You will not be mine.’ This doubt is quickly washed away as he proclaims that, nonetheless, ‘the night comes down like Heaven’.

Taking the title as Sleep Token’s most played song live (featuring Vessel doing a whimsical little hopping dance), The Offering often brings Rituals to a bombastic close. Thunderous from the outset in a whirl of choppy riffs, it’s as if our favourite masked frontman is throwing all his energy into praising Sleep. Still in the hazy throes of unfettered adoration, this is where Vessel quite literally sings the highest of praises: ‘You are a garden entwined with all / You are the silence on sacred shores / You’ve got diamonds for teeth, my love.’ At this point, his spirits are high, unabated by the conflict to come.

An almost permanent fixture of Sleep Token’s setlists, Vessel grits his teeth and faces off against Sleep in dramatic fashion in this silvery yet steely cut from Sundowning. Contrasting the relative softness of the music, which later dovetails into a stormier conclusion, Vessel’s affection curdles into a simmering frustration at the unevenness of the pair’s relationship. He reminds Sleep that he is ‘granting you more than the debt that I owe’ as the initial harmony of the music breaks down into a crushing end. It’s the first time on an album he sinks to a proper low, but heard live, it becomes an even more thrilling listen.

The hypnotic lead single from This Place Will Become Your Tomb isn’t just a syrupy love song based around nudge-wink metaphors relating to science. Within it, Vessel grapples with the notion of devoting himself to something that he can never fully understand, who eludes definition – ‘Not acid or alkaline / Caught between black and white / Not quite either day or night / She’s perfectly misaligned.’ It doesn’t impede his obsession with Sleep, but it begs the question: what is it really founded on, and can we call it love at all? It’s a captivating song thanks to its propulsive riffs and floaty electronics, but it’s also a reminder that there’s merit in listening closer and picking apart the nuance in Vessel’s words. There is rarely just a single meaning, or one feeling put in the spotlight.

It’s easy to imagine Vessel singing this in a confined, echoing space with nothing but his pain for company. Beginning with the quiet hum of a synth that drops away as he sings the first chorus, it segues into soft, jazz-like piano balladry before the guitars burst in. Anxious and bereft, Vessel confronts the possibility of Sleep becoming distant from him. ‘Seems your heart is locked up and I still get the combination wrong / Or are you simply waiting to save your love for someone I am not?’ he laments. Even if you’ve never been sucked into an unhealthy relationship with another human, let alone with an ancient god, this is guaranteed to resonate.

This thunderous headrush of a track wields a sense of both almighty power and swan-like grace. With drums that alternately patter and pound, and propulsive, powerful riffs throughout, Hypnosis finds Vessel spiralling into a morbid, all-consuming obsession that may or may not be born of his own free will. In the face of desire and the might of an ancient god he is compelled to give everything to, he is happy for Sleep to ‘Leave nothing left / Take everything’ to maim him, even, and ‘Make me bleed’. It’s seemingly been a permanent fixture of Sleep Token’s setlist since it was released, and with good reason.

Without Chokehold, Sleep Token might not have touched the heights they’ve since reached. Prolific enough to have been covered by both Daughtry and Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos, the opening song from Take Me Back To Eden is a masterclass in creating drama through sound which also seeks to re-establish Vessel’s long suffering entrapment within Sleep’s snares. Unfurling slowly before diving into hair-raising riffs, it leaves a seismic impact unlike anything Sleep Token had done until that point – and it’s become an electrifying set-opener.

Hear us out now: The Summoning will be looked back on as one of the defining songs of the decade. It broke all of the rules of what’s meant to go viral on TikTok, it’s slid onto playlists in rock clubs despite being almost seven minutes long, and it fully cemented Sleep Token’s place as one of UK rock’s modern greats. Wacky in concept but not execution, this blazing fusion of metal and funk is daring, flashy and notably horny, stuffing sex and violence into a sleek package that cannot be forgotten even after just one listen. It’s Sleep Token at the absolute peak of their powers.

It may not be an accident that Sleep Token dropped this as a single just after Valentine’s Day. Then again, Vessel’s idea of love is here twisted by its association with vorarephilia, the fetish of cannibalism, an act of submission totally in character given what they’ve established. He wants to be ‘swallowed whole’, begging Vessel to ‘welcome me in’ to both his heart and body. It’s also notably the heaviest song they’ve produced, its lacerating metal the backdrop to the most agonised screams Vessel has committed to tape. When it’s dropped early into a set, it feels even more explosive.

Along with the LP’s title-track, Ascensionism is possibly the apex of Sleep Token’s ambition. Stretching just over the seven-minute mark, it has a structure almost like the movements of a classical piece, gliding from piano and vocals to glitchy R&B before the oceanic riffs take over. By the end, it returns to where it started, yet with a key difference. Before, Vessel spoke of how Sleep would ‘take what you want and then leave’. Later, he is doing that exact thing, foreseeing his ‘Redemption, eternal ascension / Setting me free.’ It’s both a vital piece of storytelling and a fan-favourite.

Serving as an epilogue of sorts to the trilogy, the elegant Euclid represents the juncture between Vessel’s fraught past and more hopeful future. Its piano flourishes are suffused with gladness and relief, surging into arena rock hugeness with a sobering sense of triumph as Vessel vows that he ‘must be someone new’ having severed his ties from Sleep. It movingly nods at their own past with callbacks to When The Bough Breaks and The Night Does Not Belong To God – except now, ‘The night belongs to you.’

This feature originally appeared in the special edition Kerrang! Presents Sleep Token magazine.

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