Sleep Token’s Shift Deserves Praise—But Also Clarity

In his Op‑Ed for Louder, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle—who’s had a front‑row seat to metalcore’s meteoric ascendancy over 25 years—eviscerates the ‘pretentious gatekeeping’ aimed at Even In Arcadia, the latest release from Sleep Token, arguing that while not everyone needs to like them, these endless jibes about their poppy new sound are both misguided and boring.

He’s dead on. For decades, this kind of tedious posturing has plagued metal like an unwashed denim vest. The urge to defend some imaginary line between “true metal” and “poseurdom” is the lazy rhetoric of the insecure and the uninspired. It’s a tribal purity test wielded by people whose greatest fear is evolution.

But nuance, dear reader, is where this conversation dies screaming.

Because while I agree with Doc that Sleep Token shouldn’t be crucified for daring to expand their sonic palette beyond the confines of what made them “metal” in the first place, I also think it’s fair—even necessary—to acknowledge that their new record is not metal. Full stop. And no, that’s not a crime. While Doc isn’t suggesting that Even In Arcadia is a metal album, I do think the discourse benefits from explicitly acknowledging that it isn’t—because neither Sleep Token nor the metal community needs the confusion that comes from pretending otherwise.

Anaïs Nin nailed it when she wrote, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. People fail when they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” If you’re not evolving, you’re dying. And yes, some bands evolve like great white sharks—barely and brilliantly. Slayer. AC/DC. They’ve been playing the same riffs since the Cold War, and they’re damn good at it. But that’s their path—not the blueprint for authenticity.

Metallica, for all their sins and sacred cows, have never stopped being metal, even when they flirted with radio rock, loaded up on eyeliner, or handed the mic to Lou Reed and told him to go nuts. They bent the genre without breaking it.

But Sleep Token?

Let’s talk history. When they emerged like some masked cult of the melodramatic damned, there was a real metallic throb beneath the robes—djent-adjacent grooves, towering breakdowns, and a vocalist who could veer from falsetto croon to bellowing angst in a single phrase. It was an intoxicating hybrid—post-metalcore meets synth-laced R&B with a whiff of liturgical drama. It was weird. It was fresh. It was metal… at least in part.

Fast forward to their latest record and we’re in a different cathedral entirely. This is lush, ambient, heavily produced alt-pop with touches of soul and electronica. The guitars—when they appear—are ornamental. The aggression has been replaced with introspection. The breakdowns are spiritual now, not sonic. It’s gorgeous and emotive and artistically bold—but if you call it metal, you’re lying to yourself. It’s no more a metal album than Vespertine is a punk record just because Björk used a distorted snare.

And therein lies the missing voice in the conversation: while it’s essential to torch the meathead contingent screaming about “real metal,” it’s also unfair to call out listeners who say, “This isn’t metal anymore.” Because it isn’t. And there’s no sin in saying so.

The metal community doesn’t owe blanket support to every band that once carried a distortion pedal across its threshold. If Beyoncé opens her next tour with a Meshuggah cover, that hardly guarantees her slot at Wacken. So when mainstream metal outlets give Sleep Token’s new record the same reverent coverage they give, say, Cattle Decapitation, it’s fair to ask—why? It’s not gatekeeping to point out that this belongs in a different conversation.

Here’s the rub: We should support artists following their muse, even when that muse slips into silk pajamas and starts whispering sweet nothings instead of roaring into the void. But we should also be able to say, “This is no longer a metal album,” without being accused of burning heretics at the stake.

Let Sleep Token evolve. Praise their bravery. Mourn or celebrate the shift. But for the love of nuance, let’s stop trying to shoehorn their new album into this year’s top metal releases just because they used to go heavy.

That’s not gatekeeping.

That’s just knowing the difference between a duck and a Camaro.