Review Summary: This isn't metal...and that is what makes it interesting.
Of course, recognising patterns comes as naturally to humans as sorting them does. Always the urge to draw lines around gradients, the locked in expectations laughing over our shoulder at the real world. Why would this stop in the realm of culture? Genres have served many definitional roles throughout musical history, be it by designating a subgroup of producers of certain sounds, the usage of defining instruments, commercial purposes, political intent, oftentimes a complex combination of many factors. Much of it has led to the development of subjective preference into hard lines in the quicksand that try to split up the fabric of reality into manageable directed affects that define individuals by subdividing them into groups with distinct personalities.
The idea of a genre of popular music amounts to something of a logical fallacy if one tries to be rigid. Almost like a paradox of set theory, can multiple measurements of genre apply to music that happens to be popular, only being slowly culturally homogenized over spans of time that are getting shorter and shorter. After breaking my brain on this matter when I was just a kid getting into composing my own music, my subjective preferences managed to break loose from rigid confines to a point. Attempting objective criticism is made both harder and easier in different nuances.
Combined with the current landscape of culture and its distribution does this amount to more and more fracturation, increased distinction on the outskirts and stricter homogenisation in the massive centre line. Just as the advancements made in electrical engineering and software development have led to a distinctive heap of new elements and concepts to be used in writing music, this diaspora of rigid musical style may lead to a more open-minded approach to the idea of songwriting. While a certain amount of staticity seems necessary for prolonged subjective enjoyment, this forward facing dynamicism is an exciting vortex of possibility that we should not neglect exploring.
This approximation of my state of mind at the time of encountering Sleep Token describes an unfathomably complex situation. Yet, the clarity of having found something interesting washed over me quickly when the first dissonant, ominous guitar notes cut through the silence of my quiet evening. That too is the the feeling that stayed with me during the album. A jumble of stylistic elements in writing and production of course has the potential to dip into chaos until standing in it to the neck, while definitely carrying heavy connotation from previous use and origin. Leaving this learned coherence by the wayside, more benefits can be drawn from just regarding anything as a usable element. This takes all of us into the maw of the unknown.
All my words regarding this issue may have conjured up an image of wild experimentation leaving no grasp for the mind of any kind, yet, this is far from the truth. Experimentality does not have to show up in cacophony. In fact, it can be subtle, and when Sleep Token manage that, their style shines through the cracks, digging brilliant roots. The groove on The Summoning is intoxicating with its time lag, leaving out the backbeats in sections to noticable effect. The vocals are layered in octaves and panning, creating an etheral backdrop to almost all songs and marking out a strong vocal style with flashy, hard-cut and tuned runs that sometimes functions as something more like an instrument, dwelling comfortably in the middle of the mix.
Generally, the balance between in-song and inter-song variation is one of the concepts keeping up the tension throughout the album- while also showcasing that experimentation does not have to be confined to single tracks, a much rarer happenstance these streaming-days. Tracks like Granite and Aqua Regia offer more of a contrast than a stand alone experience, while the title track is an impressive odyssee through their catalogue. DYWTYLM and Are you really okay? definitely strike me as veering off the path in their cleanliness, but only the latter can really be considered hard to listen to due to entirely lacking substance, taking the most cliché turn at every possible crossroad. Besides that, the flow and ebb is rarely interrupted in unaesthetic ways. Rounding out the album, Euclid may seem to be another case of streamlining into boredom, but considered as an album closer, it serves its role well, leading up to a crescendo of emotion that requires a certain clarity of affect to reach the long promised catharsis. And I did feel relieved. Both about a band I had an affinity for developing towards a more nuanced execution of their concepts, and about the fact that modern day experimentation is not dead or stuck in an in-genre creative stillbirth.
Of course, truly quantising the quality of any human art is not possible. Of course, Sleep Token's lyrics are quite heavy handed, and harmonic complexity is rarely found, but do you really need to execute every possible category with the utmost attention to detail? Balance is the key term. The factors that demand to be balanced are frustratingly many, but out of this blank page conundrum, the creative spirit rises. There is no definitional form of good music, and while subtypes exist that inhabit the high end of the spectrum reaching from indistinguishable chaos to an ideal proto-form, the inconceivably many types of balance that can be reached is the thing that keeps us listening, exploring, analysing.
Music is inherent to human nature, but music is irrevocably shaped by culture that is just as unavoidable. Different cultural elements are transformed from a shared affinity to the point where they become unintelligible to a variety of others, just like languages- up to a point. The main differing factor in acquiring language and a musical system is the universality that remains in the rough structuring of sound that may be misinterpreted, but rarely evokes a lack of response altogether. This trait is specific to art and its forms. Insisting on short sighted purity of elements takes away one of the most interesting lanes of recombination and expansion that our globalising culture has to offer. Acts like Sleep Token seem to be making steps in a direction that, by its very nature, will be both divisive and interesting. I am quite excited to see where that may still lead.
Track recommendations:
CHOKEHOLD
THE SUMMONING
TAKE ME BACK TO EDEN
