In late December 2025, The Guardian’s music editor Ben Beaumont-Thomas, speaking on The Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, publicly labeled Sleep Token’s 2025 album Even in Arcadia as the “worst album of the year,” arguing that despite the band’s notable success and striking image, the record represented “some of the most profoundly turgid music ever made” with “some of the worst lyrics ever,” even likening the sound to “Maroon 5 if they had an iron deficiency” and calling it “fascinatingly terrible music.”
There’s no doubt that Even In Arcadia was an album which caused stir in 2025, having sparked debate from almost every angle in the music world. Some called it a triumph, others responded by questioning how Sleep Token managed to be lumped into the metal genre at all. One of the biggest criticisms came down to the fact that the band doesn’t fit neatly into any of its respective genre’s mainstream styles, somewhat-recklessly incorporating R&B, dark Pop, Trip Hop, Djent, and even percussive elements from Gospel music.
Even though Beaumont-Thomas’ criticism wasn’t published in some definitive list, it gained significant traction, being cited by blogs, YouTubers, heavy metal music websites, and even going somewhat viral in general popular music discussion spheres. It’s somewhat alarming that the music media has taken a certain “hot and cold” approach to the band, and especially to the album. Given the fact that the mainstream success was such a slow-burn, leading to Sleep Token’s entire discography to receive recent surges in popularity, there can be little doubt that its critics are especially-vocal about its idiosyncrasies.
I won’t lie for one second. I’m a real-life fan of Sleep Token, so my take on this discussion is going to be tainted by the fact that I believe the album was good, great even. However, I think it’s important to have an honest discussion about why the Sleep Token hate is perplexing, and largely just pervading in sport, rather than substance. I personally believed that Even In Arcadia was in the top records of the year, at least for me (although this is not a review of that album). I spent more time listening to the album than just about anything else during the year, digging deep into the motifs, meanings, calls-back to previous albums and lore references. It seems that the investment into the album gives listeners a similar experience to Ghost or Coheed and Cambria, having an enigmatic frontman and mysterious lyrical punches throughout.
I also won’t lie, in that there were parts of the album that left me seriously-wanting. There were absolutely some specific lyrics and lines that I found to be cheesy, and one, even a little cringey (ICU-I see you). Acknowledging that, the album was full to the brim with intrigue, intensity, emotional depth, even profound personal reflection on the part of the band who’d been publicly doxxed after the release of their last album. The recording and engineering is above-average, leaving nothing to be desired as far as the ability to enjoy each instrument and nuance. The performance of gospel-chops drummer “II” was on par with some of the best of the year in popular music, prompting several nominations for awards in the musician community.
Genre-fusion, musical performance, recording and engineering, engaging lyrical content, and involved lore and meta-commentary can be argued to outright disqualify the album from the “worst” category. Objectively, there is little on the album that could be argued as the “worst” of anything, let alone, the entire album as a whole as the single worst commercial album of all music in the year of our Lord, 2025. There can certainly be an argument into some of the specific details into the album’s deficiencies. If you want some genuine criticism, Anthony Fantano’s review makes some extremely-detailed points about how numerous elements on Even In Arcadia missed the mark for him. I honestly respect those points, as well. Fantano’s review of the album was scathing, even agreeing that it was one of the worst albums of the year.
I liken Beaumont-Thomas’ criticism to a very typical brand of Sleep Token hate, rather than a good-faith critique of the artform. There’s just objectively too much to consider, even from the viewpoint of a hater, to honestly believe that Even In Arcadia is the worst album of the year in the days of Gucci Gang, WAP, or among notorious musical releases by Lara Trump. I fully-acknowledge that it’s not hard to hate on Sleep Token when one can objectively see that the Venn-diagram of millennial horse girls who name their daughter Bella, and Vessel fan-girls has a significant overlap, which brings me to the next point.
I’ll make a genuine attempt and liken the recent Sleep Token fan phenomenon to the music industry’s favorite punching-bag, Taylor Swift. The overt obsession from the devout Token-ites has reached levels of intolerability that broadly competes with the Swifties’ on a not-insignificant level. Seeing the absolute Vessel fanaticism in the heavy metal Facebook groups, the Hot Topic merchandise aisle, or perhaps maddeningly-dealing with some ducky-clad, double-parked pink jeep blasting “Caramel” is enough to render the association with the band sour. That being said, has Taylor Swift ever released something that could objectively be labeled as the single-worst album of an entire year? As someone who really doesn’t care for anything that she does, I could never say that she has dropped to that level of piss-poordom. If anything, she is excessively-mid, at best.
Bringing me to my thesis – I understand that Sleep Token fails at being the best trip hop band. They don’t have the progressive R&B depth of Frank Ocean. They don’t display the Djenty-mastery of Meshuggah or Vildjharta. Nor does Sleep Token bear the lyrical mastery of Kendrick Lamar or Conor Oberst. If anything could genuinely rise to the top of good-faith arguments against Sleep Token, it should be that they are excessively-mid, at worst, great, at best. The truest criticism of Even In Arcadia is that it had tried to incorporate too many elements, not focusing enough on any one of them to develop a signature, leaving critics shards of undeveloped genre-dipping to try and piece together some semblance of continuity. Many of the critics argue that they just don’t see where the “glue” between all of the elements, leaving the album to present itself as some meandering, whiny comic book.
Where Sleep Token has managed to triumph is to cleverly bring fans of hip hop, pop, R&B, and electronic into the sphere where down-tuned guitars and occasional harsh vocals elevate the emotional breadth of an album. You know who else broke genre lines? Prince, Lady Gaga, David Bowie, Radiohead. Is Even In Arcadia on the same level as Ok Computer? Not really. Is Sleep Token likely to have the staying power of Ziggy Stardust? Probably not. Are they breaking barriers with music that reaches the masses and still expends the reach of heavy metal music? I think a fair argument can be made that they are. What I don’t buy is the argument that anything they’ve done is the bottom of any barrel, much less the single worst thing that the music industry offered the world in 2025. When being a hater is as much a sport as a classless fanboy, music critics lose all credibility on objectively analyzing albums when it’s more beneficial to them to haze artists who are mid, at worst. It ends up just being an exercise in using the critical platform to troll the fans. Call Sleep Token excessively-mid. That’s a fair argument. Perhaps the Guardian or Pitchfork certainly wouldn’t hire me to review anything, but that might be because I like music.
By Andy Spoon.
