"Sleep Token don’t just think outside the box, they create their own box and then continue to evolve past that. “Caramel” is one of the collective’s most unique songs and that is already a difficult criteria to meet."
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Must Listen
Sleep Token’s “Caramel”
Review by Stuart Peach
Sleep Token don’t just think outside the box, they create their own box and then continue to evolve past that. “Caramel” is one of the collective’s most unique songs and that is already a difficult criteria to meet. Vessel is known for his eclectic music stylings, mixing genres that usually wouldn’t be seen even in the same jukebox and lacing songs with irresistible hooks, melodies and breakdowns. This newest offering is no different in that sense, with its almost Samba – island beat that wouldn’t be out of place on a chart-topping Dua Lipa song alongside heartbreaking, important lyrics and a black metal-esque outro.
Since the collective’s explosion into the more public eye with the release of their third album Take Me Back to Eden in 2023, the group have stuck to their mission statement of creating beautiful, intricate art whilst retaining their anonymity – an almost impossible feat to do in this digital age. The release of The Summoning back in January 2023 can really be seen as the powder keg event that propelled them into the eyes and ears of so many and alongside it, the emergence of more ‘para-social’ behaviour.
Fandoms have a habit of fragmenting the larger an artist becomes, with the more ‘competitive’ and ‘extreme’ fans creating almost an echo chamber of toxic behaviour. This unfortunately has been the case in recent years due to the ways in which social media can propagate and ‘normalise’ crossing the line between the artist and the very real human behind the mask. Bad Omens are another band who have felt the effects of this dark side of fandom in recent years, with overt sexualisation and personal information of band members running rife.
Vessel pulls no punches in Caramel. The song is unabashedly honest about his struggles with this behaviour and even addresses the stalking drama “Terrified to answer my own front door” and the irony of those fans who wear the merch and praise the band but then attempt to cross clearly defined boundaries and scavenge personal information “wear me out like Prada, devil in my details”. The final verse is a gut-wrenching look into the camera as Vessel exclaims “So I’ll keep dancing along the rhythm, this stage is a nightmare, a beautiful prison.” This is as close to a message of I am creating my art, stop making the art about me and stop making me about you.
Even In Arcadia is the collective’s first release since their stratospheric rise, they recently hit 1M followers on Instagram and are floating around the 4-5 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. It’s likely that this album will be of a different tone to their previous offerings, addressing how the last couple of years have impacted their lives – yet still remaining painfully poetic, heartfelt and in a word – unique. The album releases on May 9th, a month before Sleep Token take to the main stage to headline Download Festival.
