Sleep Token : "Take Me Back to Eden"

 My prediction for band most likely to break big into a more mainstream audience goes to this band. Much like Ghost they mask up with more pop hiding under their disguise than metal menace. Though these guys crush Ghost with their guitar tone. The vocals are soulful enough to show Sam Smith how it should be done. The chug has more tension of the second song with shows this pop take on post-djent is pretty much nu-metal with a fresh paint job. By the end of the song he tells a baby about being their man, which pretty much blows their cover as anything but a pop band, however people are so stupid it won't stop them from thinking these guys are something they are not. 

The ways the guitars come in on "Granite' makes me wonder if the Scooby Doo gang unmasked these guys they would discover that it was Issues all along, who were using this guise to avoid being cancelled and they would have gotten away with it if it was not for those meddling kids. Lyrically things are a little more interesting on "Aqua Regia". They play the first metal song of the album on "Vore" . The screamed vocals are not the reason this is a metal song, but they help. It is more a matter of aggression. The sung vocals could have worked over it if they are able to muster something beyond the Weeknd in terms of angst. When the singing comes in on this song it is not clear that is the case. To honest the more pop infected sound might have been more effective in terms of songwriting, as this carries a more homogenized metal sound to it. 

"Ascensionism" flips the formula around. The song starts off as a ballad that if you heard out of context , you might assume was Sam Smith. Then they build it back up into something metallic before getting into their feelings again.  'Are You Really Ok?" could be any rock ballad on the radio from the late 90s. There is perhaps the most believable shade of emotion to the vocals of "the Apparition". The mood gets more upbeat with "DYWTYLM" which the kids of Tik Tok should dig. "Rain" find the formula of pop produced power ballads with a Joji feel, getting stale. The title track is somewhat disjointed, there are sounds they used just placed where it seems like they should go with no feeling directing them. They are a little too light hearted on the last song for my personal tastes  , I will give this album an 8.5. It's well made, and well written pop, with impressive vocals, but I do not feel the kind of soul that I want from my moody rock, which keeps me from not feeling their funk, though I will see if it grows on me.