BY THE TIME you read this, Sleep Token will have released Take Me Back To Eden – one of the most anticipated metal albums of 2023. The buzz that’s grown up around the enigmatic nouveau-metallers over the past few years has reached fever pitch, the band’s streaming stats on Spotify exploding from 280,000 monthly listeners in January to more than two million at the time of writing. Their success follows that of Ghost, the most notable breakout metal band of the last 10 years, whose latest album, Impera, reached No.2 in the US and UK. Further down the food chain, the likes of Imperial Triumphant, Slaughter To Prevail and Gaerea have all been making waves in recent times.
None of these bands sound alike, but they have one key thing in common: they all wear masks. At a point where the metal scene is saturated with bands and artists to the point of facelessness, these groups have taken facelessness to its logical end point. They way to get noticed in 2023, it seems, is to hide your face.