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The 11 best Sleep Token songs
Unmasking the best Sleep Token tracks ahead of their landmark Saturday night headline slot at Download Festival 2025
Over the last five years, Sleep Token have become an unstoppable yet divisive force in the heavy music world.
Transitioning from cult favourites to scene leaders practically overnight with the release of 2023 album Take Me Back To Eden, they’re the most talked about name in metal right now – and for good reason. With a genre-obliterating style that collides riffs and breakdowns with funk, hip-hop, R&B, trap, jazz and countless others, across four albums – including 2025’s chart-topping Even In Arcadia – their fearless approach has proved impossible to ignore.
With bold sonic ventures accompanied by the immersive lore surrounding frontman Vessel, they have cemented their status as masters of mystery too. Masked to conceal their identities, fans have been hooked by the intricate, emotional storytelling intertwined in everything they create. Drawing us deeper down the rabbit hole with the introduction of two houses earlier this year – with fans directed to pledge their allegiance to House Veridian or Feathered Host – they’ve committed not just to making music but living in its world.
Their live shows are already dubbed as ‘rituals’, and those present are encouraged to join the band in worship – but they’ve got a hell of a milestone in their sights this summer with the Saturday night headline slot at Download. As Sleep Token prepare to conquer the hallowed ground of Donington Park, we round up 11 tracks that have ensured their skyrocketing success.
11. ‘Blood Sport’
(Sundowning, 2019)
One of the most emotionally gutting cuts in their arsenal, this sparse piano-led ballad has been a fan favourite since day one. Heartbreakingly intimate, Vessel’s aching falsetto slews a whispered confession, tenderly laying bare his fears of loving too deeply and unconditionally. Pleading, tender, and doomed all at once, it’s a striking moment of stillness in their live set whenever it makes an appearance. If they decide to slot this one into the setlist at Download, you can be sure that there won’t be a dry eye in the field.
10. ‘Hypnosis’
(This Place Will Become Your Tomb, 2021)
Caught somewhere between brutality and serenity, this album two highlight is an absolute masterclass in sonic tension-building. Jagged, down-tuned riffs cut through Vessel’s hypnotic croon, and there’s an eeriness to the ritualistic melodies and brooding chorus all leading into one of their most pummelling breakdowns to date. Grappling with manipulation, control, and emotional paralysis, lyrically it’s a warning of the self-destruction that can come when devoting yourself to something (or someone). An ode to relinquishing control and surrendering to the beautiful nightmare, they don’t spiral down much further than this.
9. ‘Gethsemane’
(Even In Arcadia, 2025)
If you’re coming to Sleep Token looking for something that will rip your heart from your chest, stamp on it, then delicately place it back into your chest cavity battered and bruised – look no further. The penultimate track on their game-changing latest full-length, ‘Gethsemane’ is a devastating deliberation on a one-sided relationship, channelled into a stunningly cinematic meltdown. Showcasing their softer side through haunting piano chords, Midwest emo infused riffs, and some of Vessel’s most vulnerable, self-aware lyrics yet, each layer adds new weight to the devastation. Viscerally personal yet undoubtedly universal, thousands of voices singing these words together will feel like an emotional exorcism.
8. ‘Euclid’
(Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
Reckoning with love, loss, and the ultimate cost of connection, the sprawling closer of 2023’s Take Me Back To Eden is one of the band’s most ambitious to date. Clocking in at just over five minutes, ‘Euclid’ is as delicate as it is towering, its slow-build of gentle synths laced with longing, heartbreak and a desperation to break free from the cycle. Building towards a powerful crescendo as Vessel calls back to lyrics and melodies scattered throughout their discography – most notably 2019 album opener ‘The Night Does Not Belong To God’ – it’s a full-circle acknowledgement that nothing ever truly ends – it just evolves.
7. ‘Chokehold’
(Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
Released in a sudden drop that shook the internet, ‘Chokehold’ changed everything overnight for Sleep Token. Swiftly gaining viral traction in early 2023, the genre-splicing track introduced them to the world via an ominous synth drone before erupting into a storm of distortion and an undeniably colossal chorus. Merging djent, ambient pop, and R&B, at its core it’s a love song laced with suffocation and devouring; Vessel’s delivery veering from desire to dread throughout. A defining cut not just for Sleep Token but for the future of modern metal, here they delivered a powerful statement of intent.
6. ‘Alkaline’
(This Place Will Become Your Tomb, 2021)
Existential and meditative yet delightfully urgent, ‘Alkaline’ has been a staple of the band’s live set since its release. One of their most anthemic offerings, its mammoth chorus is sandwiched between a metallic crunch and glistening synths, embracing a pop sensibility without sacrificing a drop of heaviness. Serving as a gateway track for many given its immediacy and polished production, beneath the seduction and stadium-sized singalongs lies pure volatility. A paradoxical balancing act of chemistry and corruption, it’s a warning of sorts, Vessel revealing that despite the joy of finding purpose – his worship comes at an almighty cost.
5. ‘Emergence’
(Even In Arcadia, 2025)
Dropped after weeks of cryptic teasing, ‘Emergence’ marked the beginning of a new chapter for Sleep Token. With far more eyes and ears on them than ever before, expectations were sky-high for the first single of 2025’s Even In Arcadia, but this six-and-a-half-minute whiplash-inducing cut of chaos far surpassed them all. A prog song at its centre, it ventures into djent, alt. rock, trap-pop, and funk, effortlessly blending between genres before rounding out with a melancholic saxophone solo. Packed full of sharp left-turns, dark imagery, and heaps of delicious drama, Download Festival will be sent into a total frenzy when those opening bars kick in.
4. ‘Vore’
(Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
A swift middle finger to anyone attempting to revoke their status as a metal band, ‘Vore’ is a feral explosion coloured by rage, decay, and blast beats. With throat-shredding screams and almost animalistic guttural roars, it’s one of the heaviest moments in Sleep Token’s catalogue, and one of the darkest too. Tender yearning gives way to hellish obsession – the perfect encapsulation of the fine line between a powerful love and one that consumes you. Reminding us of the fragility of our emotions and the danger of diving down too deep, this stroke of madness is sure to go down an absolute treat on Download’s biggest stage.
3. ‘The Offering’
(Sundowning, 2019)
Aside from pain and longing, there’s another thing that Sleep Token have become masters of in the metal world, and that’s seduction. One of their earliest slices of sultry heaviness, ‘The Offering’ collides sleek production with pulsating, doomy basslines, all the while simmering with a deep desire for subjugation. As Vessel gives into the object of his obsession and promised his servitude, it’s one of the clearest glimpses into the character’s fractured psyche. A dark surrender laced with scintillating desire; it’s what Sleep Token do best.
2. ‘Caramel’
(Even In Arcadia, 2025)
Shocking fans upon its release earlier this year, ‘Caramel’ marks the first moment in which Vessel and co. allowed the masks to slip. A luscious, melancholy intro drawing heavily from R&B influences, within its glitched beats sits a heavy reckoning with the double-edged nature of fame. The band never intended to become an object of collective devotion, and this is a visceral exploration on what it means to have every move watched and every lyric dissected. Directly calling out the subsection of fans guilty of invading their privacy, there’s some fight here, but ultimately, it’s a quiet surrender to the machine they’ve built. Grateful for the opportunities yet wearied by all that comes with it, it’s a crushing reminder of the humanity within every musician, no matter how big the stage they’re standing upon may be.
1. ‘The Summoning’
(Take Me Back To Eden, 2023)
The one that launched Sleep Token into a different stratosphere, the arrival of this shapeshifting goliath of a single will go down as one of the biggest moments in modern metal history. Bursting out the gate with gut-rattling riffs, low-end chugs and some truly demonic screams, the track’s almighty shift at its five-minute broke the internet. Swerving into a seductive funk-laced breakdown, its soulful jazz-fusion outro brought something the scene had never seen before on this level. Daring, unpredictable, emotional, and brilliantly swaggering, it’s a mark of everything that makes Sleep Token such a force to be reckoned with in the metal world and beyond.
Sleep Token will headline Saturday night of Download Festival this June. Find tickets here
