On 12 October it was announced that Sleep Token would be joining established heavyweights Green Day and Korn as main stage headliners for Download Festival 2025.
It’s the kind of opportunity every band dreams of but a very small handful ever achieve – one that takes a considerable amount of time and talent, not to mention blood, sweat and tears.
To put it into perspective, Korn formed in 1993 and this will be their first time at the very top of Download’s bill. It will have taken them 32 years to get to this point.
Sleep Token, on the other hand, formed in 2016 and only released their first full-length in 2019 – making the transition from a new band with no music whatsoever to headliners of the UK’s biggest rock and metal festival in just under a decade.
They will also be headlining not one but two nights at London’s biggest indoor venue, the O2 Arena, in the coming weeks – a luxury only afforded to superstar giants like Iron Maiden. Fellow mask-wearers Slipknot will be playing two nights at the O2 Arena for the first time in their career later in December, which means Sleep Token will have beaten them to this landmark achievement. Yes, really. So just how the hell did they do it?
For a band so heavily guarded in secrecy, who purposefully chose not to overshare – whether it’s their creative process or personal lives – you could almost say Sleep Token are the closest thing rock music has to a cult.
Ask any fan about why the London-formed quintet are so special, and they will wax lyrical about the group’s spellbinding performances, which are referred to as live ‘rituals’, and fearlessness in creating genre-splicing masterpieces. They will describe how elements of tech-metal, prog and alternative rock are mixed with electronica and soulful pop in ways no one else has ever dared.
With the music written exclusively by leader Vessel, and performed by himself and drummer II in the studio - with bassist III, guitarist IV and backing vocalist Espera completing the line-up for live appearances - there’s also an air of mystery and theatricality that surrounds their every step.
That said, a very quick rundown of IV’s live rig was uploaded onto the Jackson Guitars YouTube channel back in June last year, where a tech by the name of Billy provided the briefest of insights into the guitarist’s tools of the trade before a sold-out headline show at London’s Eventim Apollo…
“For most of the set we use the Soloist Series X [Arch Top SLAT8 MS] eight-string, it’s got EMG 909s in it and it’s a multi-scale 26-28 [inch] because IV really likes long-scale guitars,” he explained in the Backstage Pass interview. “We use 84 to 10 strings, so quite heavy gauge strings, tuned to double drop E – E/A/E/A/D/G/B/E – and that’s standard for all our guitars and the Kemper does all the switching for us. We also use the Misha Mansoor So-Cal [2PT] signature… for songs like Aqua Regia and The Summoning. It has 10-52 [gauge strings] and is a wonderful guitar that’s really light with a Bare Knuckle Ragnarok in the bridge.”
Beyond that, the members very rarely conduct interviews and even those closest to them, from management and techs to labels and agents, even those who are no longer officially working with them, will respectfully decline to make any sort of public comment.
“The true identities behind Sleep Token are immaterial and ultimately irrelevant,” Vessel revealed in the band’s very first interview with Kerrang! back in 2018. “Our identity is represented through the art itself.”
He went on to state: “The aim with Sleep Token is to provide something people can engage with and relate to without being obstructed by the identity of its creator. Our aesthetic is there to fill the void left by that absence.”
In that regard, it would be safe to assume Sleep Token have gotten to where they stand today, from zero to hero some might call it, purely because of the quality of their music.
You could say they’re the total opposite of an industry plant, because they’re refusing to play the game and turning down nearly every interview presented to them. As Vessel himself explained, it just comes down to the art and nothing else.
Listen to tracks like Take Me Back To Eden, Chokehold and Alkaline and it should be crystal clear how they’re doing something completely fresh, original, new and exciting. The truth of the matter is there’s no other band out there that sounds like Sleep Token, and though they may share influences with everyone from Periphery to Post Malone, they exist and thrive in a genre of their own.
And herein lies the secret to their success. This is band doing it all on their own terms, letting the music speak unconditionally and uninterrupted. And Download 2025 looks set to be their crowning moment.
“It’s better in every way. The second version took what the first could do and made it five times as useful”: Waleed on Digitakt II, Ableton Live and overcoming creative block
“Why am I using this digital monstrosity when it flies in the face of all my principles that I have acquired over decades?”: Guthrie Govan makes the case for the all-digital guitar rig – it’s all about the F-word
