Take Me Back to Eden

... Token completes the trilogy that began with their 2016 debut full-length, Sundowning, and presents the cleanest articulation to date of their part-metal, part-R&B, all-chaotic sound. One of the most interesting challenges Sleep Token presents is figuring out exactly how to listen to them. Over the course of a single song like "The Summoning," the band quickly zips from doomy downtuned metal riffs to choruses with passionate falsetto R&B crooning, then straight to a technical breakdown somewhere between djent and prog metal. Attuning one's listening to these rapid changes between violently disparate styles can be one of the most enjoyable things about trying to keep up with Take Me Back to Eden. It's never a guarantee that sections of pummeling drums and guitars won't be followed seconds later by fantastical synths or thick, sleazy funk grooves -- all within the same song. Tunes like "Vore" and the especially epic title track are great examples of this complex approach as well, with the latter not quite sure how to make up its mind between nearly rapped verses and moody pop choruses on par with Imagine Dragons. The same genre combination that makes the album's best songs engaging wears thin fairly quickly across the entirety of Take Me Back to Eden's hour-long run time. Taken one song at a time, Sleep Token's ambitious song construction and perfectionistic production can be exciting and even marvelous. After three or four of these hard-to-follow stylistic road maps, however, the excitement quickly becomes exhaustion, and Sleep Token's overly polished sound starts to feel more overwrought than enjoyable. ~ TiVo Staff