Live Review: Sleep Token - O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London 20/11/2021
Having just released their sophomore offering, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, it was time for everyone’s favourite anonymous, Sleep-worshipping, metal-soundscape-with-incredible-vocals cult to take their sermons on tour, including one sold-out Saturday night in Shepherd’s Bush.
But first, the multi-instrumentalist, Japanese post-rock-collaborating wonder of AA Williams. Taking the stage with an understated brilliance, almost floating to the centre of the intimate stage, the band seemed almost ethereal in their silence. Until they started playing. With the keyboards keyed to strings, and Williams’ haunting vocals layering and reverberating around the venue (which previously existed as both a Vaudeville-esque music hall and a theatre), the band might as well have been a full orchestra behind her silken vocals for the sheer wall of atmosphere blasted into the audience. Slipping effortlessly between crooning and belting, forceful one second and despondent the next, the entire performance was as hypnotic as you’d hope a Sleep Token support would be. The soundscapes created by the four on stage were all encompassing and wholly mesmerising; at times, the band seemed as familiar as a warm fire, a caress which drew you in before turning as cold and as sharp and as deadly as a shard of ice, piercing their way into the very depths of your being and leaving you bare.
It’s just a shame that in the quieter moments the crowd weren’t as silent as the music warranted!
But more on that later.
After AA Williams, and a painfully anticipatory wait, it was time. With some dry ice emerging from the depths of the ground, Vessel took his place at the pulpit-esque piano and the twinkling of keys announced the opener, Atlantic. Their solemn voice rocked the venue before breaking out into some carefully controlled discordant chaos as the rest of the band crept and slithered to their places, nightmarish creations come to life. Followed up quickly with the roiling, teeming Hypnosis and the emotional — if unsettling — Mine, the band and their masked, unmoving choir at the back of the stage are as entrancing as... well, a cult. Yet the otherworldly quality never seemed to leave: Jaws, for instance, saw Vessel’s hands clawed, clasped as if in agony, while Vessel2 (the guitarist)’s silent screams stretched his mask into the distorted guise of some eldritch monster. Meanwhile, the deep cut of Nazareth, complete with unsettling, almost primal imagery and visceral screams over the almost mind-bendingly, reality-twisting immersive pounding of drums, gave the impression that the band has always been and always will be.
Yet it’s in the more emotive parts of the set that the band really come into their own. The one-two-three of the sophomore singles — The Love You Want, Fall For Me and Alkaline — saw Vessel at his most vulnerable, if such a thing can be applied to the daunting, breathtaking vocalist of the metal collective. Fall For Me, in particular, was incredible. The band had brought the dancers from the hypnotic music video to accompany the otherwise understated standout of the album; backlit by warm orange lights, giving off the impression of a new dawn, the song became something ineffably special. Alkaline, following straight after, seemed to suck that hope away, as the darkness began to creep in. Here, Vessel almost sank in on himself as his silhouette seemed to stretch across the thousands-strong throng of believers; the almost seething desperation, the same song that gave the first taste of the new album all the way back in June, seemed almost ritualistic in his cries.
This led quite comfortably to the ‘final’ song of the evening, the brutal Higher. The track begins as insidious yet harmonious as any other Sleep Token track, the reverberating guitar as sly as it is impactful. Yet this all changes
D as Vessel and co reached the midpoint; despondency and hopelessness transformed to rage, fury and catharsis as the masked maestro began to roar and howl; at some points, the macabre malice lent itself more to a beast than it did man. And yet, the chaos was still carefully contained, as if the mask is as much a lid as it is a disguise.
After a short wait, a disembodied voice began to ring through the auditorium. “Let’s not deceive ourselves”, it admonished us: “we are in love. It is what floats above us as we try to sleep; it is what stands beside us as we gaze into nothingness.” The voice, as beguiling as a Disney witch of old, discussed what love is — how it holds us up and sustains us while also being the cause of our very destruction. “Let’s not deceive ourselves”, it uttered once more, finally finishing, and announcing the start of the encore. And first up? The Night Does Not Belong To God.
Having been a firm crowd favourite since it came out, it was never going to be left out of the set. It’s form, however, meant that it had to be a start. And what a form. On record, it is contemplative, haunting, and all-around beautiful. It ebbs and flows, crushing you like quicksand as you descend into its cloying embrace. Live, it’s all that and more. Passionate and brutal in equal measures, it’s repetition gave way to wonder.
Following on from that, as with the beginning of This Place Will Not Become Your Tomb, came The Offering, as if to signal the beginning of the end. The Offering is near majestic in its maliciousness, the lyrics there simply to give shape to the superposition of the rippling, tumultuous, almost violent instrumentals as they swagger and build their way to a head-banging crescendo.
As the final notes echo around the room, the band leave. All bar Vessel, the lonely wanderer who, armed only with a guitar, begins the closing ceremony. In this case, that took the form of Missing Limbs.
Missing Limbs, despite being the least played Sleep Token song from any of their albums (according to Spotify anyway), is rather comfortably the most underrated. The gentle guitar, the raw, unadulterated pain in Vessel’s voice, the defeated lyrics — it can take a few listens to immerse yourself but once that happens, it is almost uncomfortably vulnerable.
The only thing that stopped this really coming to life was the crowd. Unfortunately, many of those in the metaphorical pulpits had decided it was their night — never mind moshing, crowd surfing and shouting over songs, which although sometimes unpleasant are all too common. Rather, reports of fights and people being knocked unconscious, gropes and sexual assaults; it seemed less like a ritual than it did a rabble of sixteen year olds at their first festival. I know that this is a review of the band but it would be remiss of me not to mention how poor the crowd were, and so how great the band were for still (mostly) managing to cut through that. The quieter moments still lost much of their poignancy, but at least much of the wonder was present throughout the night. It’s a shame that the actions of a few can still ruin the night for so many, but despite all of this — and the at-times obvious pain the band were in for not being able to break character and say something — the night did not belong to God. Instead, if only for an hour or so, it belonged to Vessel.
Words by James O’Sullivan
Photography by Robert Tilbury
