It has been said for some time now that the big rock and Metal festivals were in trouble. The old headline acts that guarantee good attendance are ageing, so they tour less often or even retire. The frenetic multimedia, splintered outlet, and streaming age make it much harder for bands to break out and make it big. They say there will never be another AC/DC or Metallica. Are Sleep Token the future of Heavy Metal?
Sleep Token
OVO Hydro, Glasgow – 25 November 2024
Photography: Adamross Williams
Words: Ian Sutherland
So what should those festivals do about it? Download’s head honcho Andy Copping has been on record as saying he has to find newer bands or the festival will die. The latest attempt to do that is naming Sleep Token as one of 2025’s headliners.
This is seen as controversial to some, coming a mere five years from their first full-length album release and has outraged many older rock fans with memories of the Monsters Of Rock’s golden years at Donington.
A brief examination of the band’s history does show that they are something of a phenomenon. Sleep Token have gone from playing small halls to selling out arenas like tonight’s packed OVO Hydro in a remarkably short time.
Sleep Token are already building an audience around Europe and the USA. They have done showcase gigs at venues like The Royal Albert Hall. The modern popularity measurement of Spotify listeners has grown quickly from thousands to millions. There is no doubt that this is a band on the up.
So here I am at the OVO Hydro, myself a veteran of Donington festivals back in the ’80s and ’90s, to see what the fuss is all about and what the young ‘uns are feeling that older rock and Metal audiences may not.
The first thing to note is that this is Glasgow’s OVO Hydro arena, which has sold out and is filled to its maximum possible capacity of fourteen thousand plus. I do not think I have ever seen the standing area so full.
So if selling out arenas makes you headliner worthy, Sleep Token are already there.
What is immediately impressive is the stage show, a Floydian array of lights and lasers used with some imagination. They have obviously thought through their mysterious image and deliberate distancing from their audience and decided that, in this size of venue, something extra is required.
Musically, they are known as genre-denying rather than defining. The sound varied from full on ear-busting Metal breakdowns to haunting piano-led ballads. We get industrial electro sounds to an almost folk music vibe in Missing Limbs, a moment where lead singer Vessel gets to showcase his haunting, emotive vocals, which are so much of the band’s sound.
It’s Vessel who is front and centre for almost the entire show. The rest of the band are usually shadowy figures, moving around in lights and dry ice and given the occasional highlight with a surprise drum solo or a visit to the walkway that juts out from centre stage.
Vessel is definitely the figurehead, with a frontman’s instincts as to how to reach out or play out a song’s deeper recesses in a way that resonates with his audience.
The no talking rule they have is strictly adhered to. Not a word is uttered directly to the audience. When they want a wall of death opened up in the crowd, it is achieved simply by a couple of arm gestures.
Song-wise, so far as this comparative Sleep Token novice can tell, they take the unusual step of playing songs from their three full-length albums in chronological order, which shows massive confidence in their newer material.
The highlights for me were Dark Lights, with a nice combination of vocal harmonies and electro beats building to a towering, grooving climax, the insistent piano and vocal hooks of Atlantic and the measured, cutting-edge melodies and power of Chokehold.
There is no doubt that these guys can write memorable tunes, and the reaction from the crowd at the end of an epic set closer in Euclid shows that this band is in their heart and soul. It is not just fandom, it is infatuation.
After a few bows from Vessel, the band do not bother with the old encore sham and simply depart the stage. After ninety minutes of songs of angst and dark emotions, they let their devoted faithful boogie their way out of the venue to Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody blasting out over the PA. A truly surreal ending to a memorable first show of their UK tour.
“An absolutely stunning performance, Sleep Token are one the great live bands around at the minute,” MetalTalk’s Andy Shaw wrote of their performance in 2023 at O2 Academy, Birmingham. “You must catch them somewhere soon in a smaller venue because they will be in arenas soon.” You could see tonight that Andy was not wrong.
Are Sleep Token the future of Heavy Metal? I think they are certainly part of it. They are a sensation and are likely to be a big draw over the next ten years or more to a new generation of Metal fans.
Metal has always been more open-minded than critics of the genre suggest, and Sleep Token’s way of mixing whatever they want to their sound seems to resonate with their fans.
I am a card-carrying rock dinosaur, and I am not who this band is aiming at. I am not supposed to get it, and some of it I don’t.
But I know enough to stand aside and let the new, masked faces of Metal get on with creating music in new and different ways, and our musical world will be better for it.
