SLEEP TOKEN

It's exciting to see this sort of excitement for a band; it's been a while. SLEEP TOKEN's sudden rise has already been dissected and debated, only adding to the luster of the anonymous gentleman at the heart of it all, The Vessel. His seamless genre-hopping has already moved SLEEP TOKEN beyond standard classifications — including that of the metal scene, which is just a part of where it all began. Behind a run of sold-out arena shows and a new major label record deal with RCA, SLEEP TOKEN steps into the unknown with "Even In Arcadia".

Part of the band's allure is their almost effortless amalgamation of metal, post-rock, trip-hop, trap-pop and hip-hop, to name a few. Thus, it's often a balancing between everything where the songs usually kick off being soft and tender, then charge into heaviness, as they do on "Emergence", which is perhaps the best example of The Vessel's kitchen-sink approach. Cuts like "Provider" and "Dangerous" start innocently enough, with The Vessel crooning on the latter like only he can in the trip-hop universe before blossoming into a DEFTONES-like whirl. When you get into it, it's almost a perilous combination of sounds that, somehow, all blend and enthrall more than they offend.

The album has its appropriate moments of lift and levity by way of "Gethsemane", while the lead single "Caramel" is the clear anthem here led by a radio-friendly chorus. Further down the line, album closer "Infinite Bath" gets the nod as the most impactful number of the bunch, transferring the band's familiar refrain of a gentle, atmospheric wide-open space into the heaviest moment of the ten cuts on hand.

There's a lot to digest when it comes to SLEEP TOKEN, and their constant shapeshifting is tailor-made for a restless, modern generation that no longer settles for the status quo. However, "Even In Arcadia" occasionally gets waylaid by such an approach, and getting to the point faster instead of the repeated patient builds would help to.... Still, it's a minor quirk, if anything. That said, "Even In Arcadia" catches SLEEP TOKEN in the middle of their ascent, wisely sticking to their strengths. And when you break it down, the mountain of strengths presented here, is why they appeal to so many different people.