SINGLE REVIEW: Sleep Token – Damocles

Despite achieving both 2023’s Album of the Year and Song of the Year accolades here, Sleep Token have not appeared in a review here for any of the tracks of their era. The reason is simple: who is left to preach to? In the alternative world, everybody has already made up their mind on the masked metal-makers, and a top ten single on the UK Charts proves that even the mainstream is paying attention.

Yet with ‘Damocles’, the third single from their upcoming record ‘Even In Arcadia’, things are a little different. This is a song that you cannot help but feel compelled to discuss; ‘Even In Arcadia’, even with all of its enigmatic, flamingo themed lore, is shaping up to be the band’s most open and vulnerable effort to date, and ‘Damocles’ is the strongest signifier of this yet.

Compared to the afrobeat rhythms of ‘Caramel’ and trap flows of ‘Emergence’, ‘Damocles’ is a simple number. Much of it is composed simply of Vessel’s instantly recognisable vocals layered atop of shimmering piano melodies, whilst II arrives in the back half with another incredible drumming performance, giving the track a truly rousing climax; it almost feels a little gospel in nature.

Yet what makes ‘Damocles’ so powerful to listen to is the lyricism; this is an open admittance from Vessel that all of his dreams came true, and that might well be the worst thing that has ever happened to him. Trapped beneath the weight of success and consumed by the knowledge that one day this must come to end, he delivers painful lines such as ‘And nobody told me I’d get tired of myself/When it all looks like heaven, but it feels like hell’ and ‘Who will I be when the empire falls?/Wake up alone and I’ll be forgotten’. The listener cannot help but feel complicit in this existential misery.

‘Take Me Back To Eden’ was an album described as an ending, bringing the narrative that spanned the first three records of a destructive, spiralling relationship to a close. Yet if ‘Damocles’ is anything to go by, ‘Even In Arcadia’ could be even more of a closing chapter for this band; as fearful as Vessel might be of the end, it may well prove to be a better fate than living with the weight of fame. A beautifully harrowing look into what could be another Album of the Year contender.

For Fans Of: Bo Burnham, Spiritbox, Dayseeker, Zetra, Bring Me The Horizon

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