How not to criticise Sleep Token

The other day this landed on my desk:

I’ve gone to great lengths in avoiding the Sleep Token. Mentally consigning them to the “none of my fucking business” folder. But this video of the Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas describing their ‘Even in Arcadia’ album as the worst of 2025 piqued my interest. An opinion delivered with all the smug, knowing conceit we expect from the trenches of the metropole. Once again, the liberal commentariat exercises its outsized sway over official doctrine, once again we must answer the call. Suddenly Sleep Token is very much my business. They may be a lost lamb as far as metal is concerned, but they are still part of the flock. We still have a duty of care when a Beaumont-Thomas wades in with stock takes on naff lyrics and categorically untrue comparisons to Maroon 5.

Is he just firing up his base? Ragebaiting for clicks? Clues abound. Despite the calm self-assurance that he is delivering the correct take, this is actually a rich layer cake of middlebrow dog whistles. The detached ironic sentiment of the centrist. Ideologically averse, beliefs to them are like firearms, dangerous if acted upon without professional training.  

We could locate this sentiment in a journalistic strain of aggressive contrarianism that emerged at the tail end of the nasty 00s. To survive the decade of Pop Idol, Jackass, and Big Brother with its dignity intact, the more affluent branch of Gen X cultivated an image of trashy sophistication. Think Bridget Jones’s posh but sweary pals, Jamie Oliver circa the ‘Naked Chef’, Adam Curtis Films and Radiohead albums. Witty but crass, moral but post ideological, keyed into the zeitgeist but unsullied by its excesses thanks to an armoury of witty quips, embodying the contours of intellect if not the substance. They instinctively regarded anything that wasn’t middlebrow with suspicion. An elitism backed by a collateral of knowing one-liners.

But the so called woke wave of the 2010s forced this liberal mindset to soften its language toward “mass” culture, lest one be accused of punching down. One Direction, ‘Twilight’, and ‘I’m a Celebrity’ were no longer objects ripe for a crisp takedown, but phenomena to be studied, analysed, maybe even redeemed with the proper caveats. In this context, Beaumont-Thomas’s roasting of Sleep Token feels like a throwback, a late 2000s vignette from Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.  

But this isn’t the late 2000s. There is no such thing as the last word on anything. Tastemakers are guaranteed to be met with a slew of counter takes from the digital savanna. This is already underway for Beaumont-Thomas. Grown men are taking to the internet to bat for Sleep Token (hi). Maybe they’re good actually, and Beaumont-Thomas is out of step.  

This push and pull of critique and redemption reminds me of Creed. Sleep Token exist in a post woke, post social media age, opinion can turnover in a matter of days. Creed, by contrast, it took us two decades to redeem them as good actually. But the parallels are striking. Derided in their early 00s heyday as an anachronistic throwback to embarrassingly earnest stadium rock. They even had the cheek to be openly Christian at a time when the New Atheists were on the rise. Their videos and lyrics peppered with proto biblical references not dissimilar to Sleep Token’s semi-divine mythos. And, despite the best efforts of naysayers, Creed also remained stubbornly popular. In the sadistic early 00s many craved the holdout of sincerity and vulnerability they offered. Their recent redemption amongst aging millennials, first as meme, then as nostalgia, now as “fuck me, you forget how many bangers these guys had” could be read as fulfilling a similar appetite today for unfiltered, unironic, one dimensional vulnerability, at a time when such things seem to be in short supply, especially for listeners edging their way to forty.

Sleep Token are a musical collage, elements of trap and R&B, modern pop, emo, djent, a diverse melting pot packaged in a Gen Z coded veneer. Surely a Guardian columnist would tread lightly on this turf, furnish us with the proper context, explain Sleep Token’s DNA and attempt to account for their popularity with a semblance of academic rigour? Surely we are past the days of stuffy white guys casually dismissing pop culture to garner clout with their fellow middlebrow foot soldiers? Or is this knowing takedown from the Guardian a canary in the coalmine? No longer will the centrist bible pay tribute to lived experience. Even its most outspoken champions are abandoning fort woke. Some art is just irredeemably shit and should be tarnished accordingly.

But they would never come out and just admit it. Hence the dog whistles behind Beaumont-Thomas’s take. He may point to bad lyrics, tepid music, or the false advertising behind the silly costumes, but his real problem with Sleep Token is their naked sincerity. A hysterical vulnerability delivered layer free. That’s the problem. After listening to ‘Even in Arcadia’ a few times I realised that there is no angle for a take, no postmodern witticism, no duality of meaning. It’s just a fuckboy experiencing a 5am meltdown at the afters, prostrating themselves before any remaining revellers willing to listen, painfully heartfelt music delivered with an adolescent naivety that makes adults want to look away in embarrassment.

I’d argue that this is where they overlap most with metal, far more than the laboured mythology they’ve built around themselves or the occasional chord. The music is incredibly unfiltered, direct, uninhibited. Historically it’s this extreme, subtextless sincerity that has barred metal from entering the middlebrow compound of the Guardian commentariat et al. But in a post woke context all art is created equal. Or at least all art is an instance of lived experience that must be treated with a modicum of respect. From K-Pop to the floss, this has forced middlebrow journalism to reckon with all manner of trends they would have previously regarded as beneath them. Luckily they have been spared the indignity of doing this with the (mostly) male, (mostly) heterosexual, (mostly) working class artform that is metal, which was busy reforming itself in the 2010s into a largely middle class and increasingly diverse affair, giving the liberal commentariat license to cover it whilst retaining a semblance of intellectual hygiene.

Contrast Sleep Token with their treatment of Rosalia’s ‘Lux’ (an album every bit as histrionic), which made the Guardian’s 2025 album of the year. Rosalia’s raw emotional vulnerability comes packaged in Catholicism and classical music. Catnip for an intelligentsia keen to continue enjoying pop without appearing to enjoy pop. In a post woke world, shouldn’t the urban music and raw emotion of Sleep Token be treated with the same respect as Rosalia’s worldly arrangements? Or is Beaumont-Thomas’s outburst a sign of a realignment in this regard? A recapitulation of an older liberal conceit? Meat is back on the menu as far as the Guardian culture section is concerned. We no longer need to caveat our opinions on “low” culture with knowing qualifications about our own privilege or understand the specific perspective behind artistic expression.  

Sometimes, criticism is the art of determining the creator’s motivations, and assessing whether they have achieved what they set out to do. This is why it helps to be somewhat knowledgeable about the artform to critique it in a way that might be useful for a readership. Without this, one is no longer critiquing art but describing a series of subjective impressions, they may be articulate and interesting to read, but it doesn’t serve as criticism, the literal art of telling readers whether an album, film, or restaurant is worth their time and money. This is one reason why Sleep Token provoke me into having my cake and eating it. I refuse to pass judgement on their work, but that doesn’t mean anyone else can just wade in and do so. In between the depth charge chords scattered piecemeal across their discography I am lost and alone in an eclectic menagerie of modern pop ephemera that I have no business getting involved in. But I can still tell it’s well put together, musically tight, detailed, and nakedly sincere (embarrassing as it may be to experience as a thirty something). Forgetting their image for a second, there is nothing pretentious about Sleep Token. That, and their popularity amongst various groups, makes them worth examining. For the Guardian to try and hold court on the matter is a lazy afront. In the case of Sleep Token, it seems, my enemy’s enemy is my friend.  

They, like Creed before them, achieve exactly what they set out to do. There is nothing of the ‘St Anger’ or ‘Illud Divinum Insanus’ about this (or perhaps Megadeth’s recent ejaculation is the contemporary reference). No vaulting ambition and subsequent cold plunge into failure. They seem to be completely aware of their cultural surroundings and their place within it, and as performers are more than capable of planting their flag exactly where they intended. The target audience has gathered round accordingly. That’s why deploying the usual siege weaponry will only end in impotence. Sure the costumes may be false advertising. Sure it’s for the kids. Sure it’s “cringe”. But these impressions are unsurprising and uninformative coming from middle aged, middle class white guys. What about the opinion of the critic? Of course their music isn’t beyond reproach (in this regard Fantano actually give a better treatment of this album). That it’s not to some people’s taste is worth interrogating. But to truly criticise Sleep Token, one is required to go deeper and meet them where they and their fans are.