Despite the definitive language used by publications like this one, the quality of a piece of music is subjective— one man’s trash is another’s treasure, and it’s always best to treat album reviews like simple recommendations. The reason to discuss albums negatively isn’t to dissuade any would-be listeners, but to give more weight to our praise of deserving projects: Sleep Token fans are well within their rights to celebrate new record ‘Even In Arcadia,’ just as they did with 2023’s ‘Take Me Back To Eden,’ though it’s not a hype train we’re able to board ourselves. Despite the occasional standout moment, Vessel and company’s fourth album is a tasteless, exhaustive mess, better relegated to the annals of history than placed at the top of the Download Festival bill.

‘Even In Arcadia’ is very much a response to the swell of enthusiasm that swallowed ‘Take Me Back To Eden,’ not just in its lyrical themes, but also in its presentation and style. Vessel continues to hammer away at his usual tropes on this one, often to the album’s detriment. Opener ‘Look To Windward’— arguably the strongest cut on the record— introduces the extreme variety of sounds the band implement throughout their new album, bouncing between genres like a vigorous game of pinball: the song is stuffed to the brim, featuring a climactic three-minute ambient build, djent-adjacent guitar riffs, primal screams, modern R&B passages, sultry piano balladry and more. Crucially, many of these elements work in isolation— the cut’s main riff is about as momentous and menacing as any in the back catalogue, contrasting the infectiousness of many melodies throughout the song. It's in its arrangement that ‘Look To Windward’ crumbles, stacking disconnected sections together like it’s a foregone Jenga tower.

That crippling issue takes root throughout the entire record, weighing far too many tracks down in pointless breakdowns, misguided ambient inclusions and whiplash-inducing transitions. ‘Even In Arcadia’ raises the question of whether Sleep Token even want to make metal music at all anymore, as the album’s heaviest moments are often haphazardly stapled onto the end of songs like an afterthought: the three singles ‘Emergence,’ ‘Caramel’ and ‘Damocles’ all fall prone to the same trick, stomping on their own R&B verses and glitzy balladry in favour of generic, overblown guitar work. The record often has us scratching our heads as to what we’re meant to be grabbing onto, stumbling through increasingly self-indulgent wanderings as it progresses— closing cuts ‘Gethsemane’ and ‘Infinite Baths,’ in particular, are laughably incoherent, though very few sections across the entire album feel meaningfully connected to what’s around them.

Of course, a scattered collection of musical vignettes doesn’t disqualify an album in and of itself: take Opeth’s ‘The Last Will And Testament’ from last year, which managed to impress us in spite of its severe pacing issues. By contrast, ’Even In Arcadia’ seems determined to neuter itself at every turn, smothering even its strongest ideas beneath a needlessly glossy finish— the album makes a strong case to be one of the most overproduced records in modern metal, with its fiercest competition being Sleep Token’s own back catalogue. Though the desire to make the pummelling djent riffs on cuts like ‘Look To Windward’ or ‘Infinite Baths’ as overwhelming as possible is admirable, moments like these are instead choked in reverb, reducing the guitars to a groaning, garish thing eating up the mix. Vessel continues to disguise his impressive vocal abilities behind an onslaught of pitch correction, stripping ‘Damocles’ and ‘Gethsemane’ of near-any emotional impact: when all is said and done, only the genuinely jaw-dropping drumming from II manages to survive the album’s soul-sucking production.

The resulting album is a trying gauntlet of dull R&B verses, bland metal crescendos and pretentious indulgence— no track on ‘Even In Arcadia’ manages to remain engaging front to back, and a fair few never even get close. ‘Past Self’ is about as tasteless as they come, layering grating vocal harmonies over an empty, shallow beat— ‘Dangerous’ suffers from that same hollow feeling, even if the track carries with it some darker and more intriguing melodies. Sleep Token aren’t incapable of writing enjoyable pop and R&B— the sultry ‘Provider’ is something of a standout, even if the cut’s sexual undertones and thunderous riffs are both overly boisterous— but they do seem to miss the mark the vast majority of the time, leaving us with the confused math-rock leanings of ‘Gethsemane,’ aimless whining of ‘Damocles’ and an absolute nothing-burger of a title track.

Credit where it’s due, the record does offer the occasional highlight, even if the listener is forced to dig for them: the album may even have more bright spots than ‘Take Me Back To Eden,’ though that is more of a participation award than it is an achievement. Despite its nonsensical structure, ’Look To Windward’ proves that the band’s signature genre fusions have potential: the song’s best moments pack a real punch, even if the song is at least two minutes too long. Vessel comes out with some standout deliveries on ‘Caramel’ and ‘Provider,’ clearly putting in the work to bring his singing and rapping up to the level of his screams— more deserving of praise, though, is the band’s drummer. II’s playing is both technically stunning and instantly evocative, feeding into a desire to transform even the most static of passages into something more engaging. Sleep Token are talented musicians: it just breaks our hearts to see them wasted on writing like this.

Another improvement from ‘Take Me Back To Eden,’ ‘Even In Arcadia’ (mostly) divorces itself from that album’s nebulous meditations on love and devotion, centring itself around Vessel’s anxieties in the wake of newfound fame. Though his wordplay is a little flowery at times, it’s a welcome surprise to get material more grounded and intimate from Sleep Token, lending a fair few of these cuts a more relatable aspect that’s greatly appreciated.

“Am I walking with gods or merely stumbling forth

Until there's fire at the gates, until I fall to the floor?

You know I live by the feather and die by the sword

And I will sunder the earth only to burn the reward”

As ever, these thematic explorations are highly inconsistent— still, it’s a point worthy of praise, elevating otherwise drab singles ‘Caramel’ and ‘Damocles’ to a certain degree. When Vessel returns to his ideas of ‘worship’ though, the lyrical quality takes an absolute nosedive, devolving into the mumble-rap nonsense metalheads themselves normally love to insult.

“'Cause you've been hitting my phone so hard 

I found it breathing through a tube in the ICU

Yeah, I see you

The only bad baddie spitting ice in the room

The only good girl this side of the moon

And you're the only game that I like to lose”

‘Infinite Baths’ is exactly what many listeners will want to take after sitting through an album this sappy— in spite of the occasional moment of lyrical depth or musical success, ‘Even In Arcadia’ is an insidiously awful record. The problems Sleep Token have failed to address here infect it like a disease: garish sound design, grating vocal performances, haphazard songwriting, ugly genre fusions and so, so many more glaring issues plague the album, leaving us with our heads in our hands. Beneath its coldly competent exterior, the group’s fourth album continually squanders its potential— once again, the band are putting us to sleep with this one.