Even In Arcadia

''Even in Arcadia'' is the fourth studio album by anonymous British rock band Sleep Token. It was released on 9 May 2025 by RCA Records. The album garnered significant media attention amid an unorthodox marketing campaign that has included a weatherman at WRAL in North Carolina providing hints to release dates and album singles.

Background and release

On 18 February 2025, Sleep Token created their first official TikTok account and for their first post, captioned it with a mysterious website titled
Show Me How to Dance Forever
. The website displayed a floral pink/grey aesthetic among early empire architecture, with seemingly random letters scrambled across the screen that needed to be entered in a specific sequence. Fans of the band found in the source code of the website a code arrangement depicting an archway and location coordinates that led to the 18th-century Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror image of Nicolas Poussin's painting of the '' Shepherds of Arcadia.'' The inscription on the monument is the unsolved Shugborough inscription cypher which was discovered to be the correct arrangement on the website. Once users entered this correctly, a black flamingo appears, and they are then asked to provide their email address. Users were then greeted with a message "With Gratitude" and then sent an email titled "BEHOLD, A DIVIDE", with two options available to click, "House Veridian" and "Feathered Host" each with their own distinct logo and colour scheme. Both image links, when followed, led to the band's merchandise website. A second email was then sent that placed the user within the "house" of whichever link they initially followed.

On 26 February 2025, another email was sent out with links to two newly created Instagram accounts, each representing House Veridian and Feathered Host. Both accounts then posted images of identical sheet music. These eventually went viral with thousands of fans recording their interpretation of the sheet music on various instruments and programs and uploading them to social media platforms. It was later discovered that the House Veridian version of the sheet music had the Latin words ''septuagesimus'' and ''secundus'' which translates to "72nd" and each word was placed on the 3rd and 13th measure of the sheet music. This led fans following these clues to believe something would happen on the 72nd day of the year which also equates to the date 13/3 or 13th March, which also coincided with a blood moon lunar eclipse.

On 7 March 2025, Sleep Token officially teased new material via their official Instagram page as well as the two House Instagram accounts, showing the black flamingo surrounded by flowers in front of old, gothic-like architecture with the caption "Prepare for a new offering", and a link to pre-save a song on streaming services. On the same day, each house Instagram account shared a Morse code snippet, with both translating to more location coordinates nearby each other at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. Fans who followed this and visited the locations found QR codes with the logo of each house on them. These QR codes both scanned as the words "Blood" and "Moon" with the assets for each showing a number, which when entered as a cipher, revealed the word "EMERGENCE".

On 10 March 2025, music venues/arenas around the United States began to change their social media profile pictures to one of the logos for the two houses. At the same time, billboards with the new aesthetic found on the website began appearing around the US, with the line "Have you waited long for me?" and these music venues then began posting teaser reels with the same line. This led fans to believe a new tour was about to be announced.

On 13 March 2025, Sleep Token announced their fourth studio album entitled ''Even in Arcadia,'' due for release 9 May 2025. They simultaneously released their first single from the album, entitled "Emergence" available on all streaming services. A new tour of the United States was announced with confirmed dates and a new website with brand new merchandise available to pre-order was launched.

During this time, weatherman Chris Michaels who features as the morning meteorologist for the WRAL-TV network, known for subtly incorporating lyrics from heavy metal bands into his TV reports, took to Instagram, sharing a clip with Sleep Token's logo on the screen behind him with Emergence playing and the caption: "Prepare. 3/29". Following from this, he dropped a further teaser on that date asking us to "Prepare" in his report and that something is "Developing later in the week". On the screen behind him showed various cities in the region with "Behold, an offering" at the top. Some of the cities were missing characters and fans were quick to figure out the missing letters spelt out "CARAMEL" and then worked out that an example of sugar pyrolysis would result in caramel formation. Several days later, the official Sleep Token and house Instagram accounts shared a new reel very similar to the one that teased "Emergence", this time with the black flamingo walking inside one of a building in the Arcadia garden aesthetic, with the message: ''"Prepare. Caramel. 4/4".'' Following this teaser, all streaming services revealed "Caramel" to be Track 5 on the new album, confirming it as the second single from the album.

On 4 April 2025, Sleep Token officially released their second single from the album, "Caramel" on all streaming services. The song became the bands highest charting single across multiple countries around the globe, making it their most successful release to date. For the first time, Vessel is not singing from a place associated with the lore and story they have built up over the years, but from the very personal perspective of the man behind the mask. The stress brought to the band members' personal lives as they struggle to remain anonymous as they gain notoriety is highlighted. Vessel does acknowledge in this song that in hindsight, this should have been an expected outcome, and that even with the drawbacks of fame, they still love making and performing their art. During the global YouTube premiere countdown, the Feathered Host and House Veridian symbols flashed, creating a binary code. Fans decoded the binary to "DAMOCLES" which ended up being the third single.

On 16 April 2025, Sleep Token hosted a puzzle through Spotify by updating the Canvas of Emergence to the first 5 tracks using only the letters in Emergence and Caramel. 2 hours after the puzzle was found, the tracklist was confirmed by Spotify on Instagram. The following day, Caramel got a similar treatment, but for the last 5 tracks on the album.

On 25 April 2025, Sleep Token released a third single, "Damocles", to all streaming services. The song's lyrics further explore the effects the band's rise to fame have had on Vessel.

Composition

Musically, ''Even in Arcadia'' has been described as alternative metal, djent, pop, R&B, progressive metal, pop rap, trap, and metalcore, with elements of math rock, emo, arena rock, trip hop, electronic, and reggaeton.

Critical reception

''Even in Arcadia'' was met with generally favorable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received a weighted average score of 64, based on eight reviews, which the website categorised as "generally favorable" reception.

Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic gave ''Even in Arcadia'' a positive review, commending the band for incorporating many different "styles" on the album. He described the track "Caramel" as the album standout, while deeming the album "a streamlined evolution of their established sound". Writing for '' Clash'', Susan Hansen opined that the album "is an absorbing listen" and that the band explores "unused genre territory" on the record. Hansen ends her review by stating that "Sleep Token's mastery of building musical enigma is completely seamless and continuous, and ''Even in Arcadia'' is no exception. It's a unique commercial and artistic asset, which cannot be taught. If anything, they take the precise quality to the next level on this project, with a refinement that's there for everyone to witness". Emma Wilkes of ''Kerrang!'' wrote an overall positive review, stating that the album's "minor quibbles are easily dwarfed by the height of its peaks". With "minor quibbles", Wilkes is referring to the track "Past Self", which she describes as "airy synth-and-drum-machine pop" that "gets a little wobbly". Rishi Shah of ''NME'' acclaimed the album, opining that it "shatters any pressure of expectation into oblivion, building on the bravery of its predecessor, sonically, while its lyrics reveal the most exposed version of Vessel we've seen yet. From Eden to Arcadia – and beyond – let the worship continue".

Conversely, the album was panned by Eli Enis of ''Pitchfork'', who described it as "smooth, flat, edgeless, and utterly lacking in dynamic payoffs, despite its many attempts to swing from breathy ballads to bludgeoning breakdowns". Likewise, A staff reviewer from ''Sputnikmusic'' was critical of the album, criticizing its lyrics and describing the album as "probably the band's best and worst work yet". The reviewer continued by stating that "Sleep Token have conclusively proven themselves to be wholly incompetent songwriters, and everything here is almost offensively boring".

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from Qobuz.

*Carl Bown – production, mixing
*Jim Pinder – engineering
*Adam "Nolly" Getgood – additional production
*Sebastian Sendon – additional engineering, drum editing
*Ste Kerry – mastering
*Gabi Rose – saxophone (2)

Charts

Release history

References

External links

Even In Arcadia Album - Sleep Token
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Lyricsgist
{{Sleep Token

2025 albums
Sleep Token albums
RCA Records albums
Albums produced by Carl Bown