Sleep Token are Revolver's Artist of the Year, and their towering instant-classic Take Me Back to Eden is our No. 1 album of 2023.
So yeah, you can say that we here at Revolver HQ are big fans of Sleep Token — and we're hardly alone in that.
Beyond their devoted cult of worshipers, the anonymous, masked band have earned glowing praise from many of their fellow musicians in the heavy-music world. In fact, one of their most famous fans is Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee.
In the 2000s, Evanescence spearheaded a captivating mix of heavy-rock bombast and moody, ethereal atmosphere. On their debut album, Fallen, Lee and Co. demonstrated how explosive metal surges ("Bring Me to Life") and melancholy piano balladry ("My Immortal") could coexist harmoniously.
So, in a way, Evanescence were tapping into Sleep Token's sonic wavelength while Vessel was possibly still inhabiting a past life. Unsurprisingly, Lee is over the moon about Sleep Token's shrewd songcraft and jaw-dropping ambition.
"I love Sleep Token. I'm blown away," Lee enthuses to Revolver. "How do they do it? How do they go so many different directions and call it one song?
"It took me three listens of ["The Summoning"] to realize that when they do that whole psychedelic section at the end, that it's actually the same chorus as it was before, only in a completely different way. And I love it even more for that.
"I thought they just went a whole new direction and wrote a new part, and then I was like, "Wait that's the same… but not at all."
She continues: "I love it. I think as a musician, music like that gets your brain tingling. It's exciting. It's like, wow, anything's possible. It's inspiring. I like them a lot."
While Lee has been the very public face of her band for the past two decades, Sleep Token are, of course, fastidiously anonymous. Yet despite the very different approach, the Evanescence frontwoman is quick to affirm Vessel's choice to remove the cult of personality from his project and put all the focus on the music.
"I think it's amazing," she says of Sleep Token's secrecy. "I think too much these days the focus is on everything but the music with a lot of the mainstream. And for me, if there's not the music then what are we doing? That's what this is supposed to be about. I love it. I think it's awesome. It's creative. It's really cool."
Order Revolver's new 76-page Sleep Token collector's issue, featuring rare photos, a deep dive into their trilogy, famous fan tributes, and more, at our shop.
