Listening to Sleep Token: Take Me Back To Eden, Part 1 

Jim on Sleep Token: "It's a very very weird marriage of styles, but it really works!" You're 100% on point there, Jim! I'll be awaiting your reaction to the rest of the album. Cheers!

"Achingly Modern" That's perfect in ways you didn't even know

As a fifty year old metal head, I'll admit that my finger ain't quite on the pulse anymore with a lot of current rock bands. And I'd only vaguely heard of Sleep Token before a few days ago when my awesome, rock loving (thanks to some awesome Uncle-ing!) niece gave me this album for Christmas. Jim, my reactions were the same as yours, I was blown away after periods of confusion / delight / WTF? It's probably the best album of 2023 imho and I can't wait to see what you make of the rest of it!

I'm quite jealous that you now have so much excellent SleepToken to listen to for the first time. This is the third in a trilogy and your ears deserve to listen to Sundowning and This Place Will Become Your Tomb. TMBTE is even better when you have the first two on board.

The band is actually really only made up of two members: Vessel and II (pronounced 'Two'). Vessel is the singer, and he writes the lyrics and plays all the instruments except for the drums, which are written and performed by II. Vessel is also apparently a coproducer. They're a really special band; glad you're enjoying it! Worship.

Yeeeees, I was waiting for you to get to this. ST are amazing. Music journalists: "What genre are you?" Sleep Token: "Yes."

I’m really late to the party but I just wanted to say these are some seriously high quality reaction videos, I’ve got no clue how I never found your channel earlier.

Wow!! 🤘👏🤘

What a band this is. Such creativity flowing through every song, which is especially apparent if you listen to their three albums back to back - the last two tracks of this album contain a lot of callbacks to those album.

Such a slapper!!! Next reaction - Nick Thurl end up dead 😍

I'm addicted to their music. It's like a sonic drug 😍 Next reaction - Nick Thurl end up dead 😍

I really like this format. And I also like a reactor that knows what he is talking about.

Thank you for doing this, Jim! I love your reactions and was hoping to see you react to this album!

What I’d give to not only relive my first listening experience with each song but to hear this full album without having heard the singles as they released throughout the year. Thank you for doing this and happy you’re enjoying it!

A delightful reaction since it brings back memories of my own reaction. I haven’t been so excited by a new band in a very long time. Such a refreshing sound and with great melodies, delivered with emotion, intricacies and creativity.

Sleep Token are the best band I have ever come across and the recent album is definitely my AOTY! You should go down the rabbit hole now. They’re genre bending and use elements of everything from rock, metal, RnB, trap, hip hop, gospel, and more. Even if you don’t like one song don’t write them off as every song is different and as you can see from this one they switch up completely through the songs, also don’t be thrown off by some of them being 7-8 minutes long either as it goes by far too quickly. You should start at the beginning and work your way through as they tell a story and have call backs to a lot of them. The band are anonymous, I and others know who they are but won’t reveal out of respect to the band and fans but the singer goes by the moniker Vessel, drummer, who is a beast is II, bassist III and guitarist IV. From London UK. As far as their discography goes they brought out two EPs called One and Two, then 2 singles called Jaws and The Way That You Were, then the three albums Sundowning, The Place Will Become Your Tomb, then TMBTE (Take Me Back To Eden). They’ve done five covers that I’m aware of. One being Hey Ya by OutKast, I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston, Is It Really You? By Loathe and When The Party’s Over by Billie Eilish, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. His Vocal range I believe is B ♭2 to F#5 and he has a wonderful chest voice, head voice and scream. I have never hyper fixated on a band like I have with these! Loved the react and Will subscribe and hopefully see many more. 🖤

I'm happy to be here from Colombia hearing this masterpiece on LP

At last Jim.. What a band.. And what an album

I've tried a number of times to get into Sleep Token due to their massive popularity. I've never been able to fully get on board, however. I'll try again with you!

Man i always love seeing first time reactions to sleep token! This is one of the best ive seen! Truly my favourite band! Their previous albums sundowning and this place will become your tomb, are very polished and just beautiful albums as well! Gotta check them out!!

I just saw the headline for this video and I cannot tell you how happy this makes me Jim I am going to watch these videos cover to cover. I love your reactions and I love this band. I cannot wait to see your take on them.

Side 1 sounded awesome. An eclectic mix of genres. And it all works. Heavy and the mellow. And all points in between!

worship!

Exited to hear Jim’s perspective. Found Sleep Token when this album dropped and I’ve been hooked. 🍿🥤

I fucking love sleep token, I’ve been listening to the album on repeat for weeks

WORSHIP

I'm not a fan of this band... but I'm glad you are doing a lot of different bands/styles. Cheers, Jim!

It's wild to hear the "depth" difference from vinyl, love it

The are great

I've been a fan of them since day one, and they continue to blow me away 😍 Btw seriously you need to reacto to end up dead by Nick Thurl

Enjoy the journey!

You mentioned Leprous, my other favorite band! Excellent!

Hey Jim , long time no see!! I just discovered this band a few weeks ago and I can’t stop listening to this album

Yay! Glad to see you checking out some Sleep Token! The are insanely talented in every aspect and they just seamlessly blend all genres! I’ve loved all of your Devin Townsend reaction videos! I actually just saw him last night with Animals as Leaders and Dream Theater…what a freaking show! 🤯

Ha would you believe it... i never mentioned this but Sleep token is my absolute favorite Band recently. Just crazy how versatile they are

Wow quick

Let's go! Thanks for the reaction. Can't wait to see more of what you think.

are there such coincidences? never heard of it until yesterday and saw them live in Berlin last night .. Sleep token opens for Slipknot. We are in Berlin because of the Marillion gigs this weekend

If I had a record player this would be the first record I would purchase

Shades of Leprous, but also Katatonia....I know you'll like Katatonia when you get to them.

Hello from chilly Connecticut

Yo just to say, it actually does have the title on the record. It's written in glyphs below the art. They write vertically downwards, left to right. First word (4 symbols below each other) is take, then me, etc etc. Hence why the runes are a pillar of 4, then 2, then 4, then 2, then 4 again. Sleep Token write quite a lot of things in their glyphs rather than English.

8:16 and yet I believe the record is a critique about our modern situation.

Fun fact: the runes in the album cover say "Take Me Back To Eden" They created the runes themselves

I really dig this project. The other day my wife was cooking dinner and put on Taylor swift. I suddenly realized that sleep token is using nearly the same formula as Taylor swift. The difference being. Male vocals, Some low tuned guitars and minor melancholy dark twists. And killer drumming. But otherwise it’s eerily similar. All of that said I really love this band.

I will be buying you a coffee

As usual I have never heard of them 😇 Ha, you already liked my reaction but I wasn’t ready yet😅. I’m always typing while listening to the music. Is it metal? I would put them in the post-rock genre with bands like Lost in Kiev, Elephant tree and Crippled black phoenix. I like it very much too apart from the growling. But that was very short.

This is one where the singer's voice is a big hurtle. Whether it is or not, it sounds "forced" to me and I just can't enjoy it as a whole despite the rest of it being pretty good. Since you are doing some kind of surprising newer releases, you have to do Avenged Sevenfold's new album! I am an older fan despite them not neatly fitting into Prog metal, but it is absolutely brilliant and has got to at least be in the talks of prog metal album of the year with Haken and Riverside.

The other day I sang Rain When I Die from Alice In Chains calling it one of the nastiest sounding songs ever. This 1st song approaches that type of nasty attitude. Good shit Lim.

Sounds like a male Evanesance.

I really do like this album but it was released the same day as the ocean's new album and that stole the show for me. I totally think you should get that album (holocene) as it's very different has a lot of influences from massive attack this time and I know your fans hate the screaming well out of the 8 tracks there's only a little bit of screaming over layered on the singing at the end of track 4, 6 7 and 8 but it's very minimal. I defo think it would be more up your street than previous albums.

ST are better than alll the bands you mentioned. All instrumentss are played by Vessel apart from drums thats done by II. Music and lyrics also by Vessel. They have been around since 2016. Ill tell you more as we go along. Apart from that you have started with the last album of a trilogy.

I went from pretty much only listening to the new Haken album for 3 months to giving this a listen and I only lasted three songs. I just found it so boring. They have these overly long slow sections where you are waiting for something to happen then a metal section kicks in which just sounds really generic and uninventive. I don't get the hype but each to their own.

Poor guy. I feel sorry for you having to review this drivel