Corey Taylor has praised Sleep Token and compared the mysterious masked band to early Slipknot.
Sleep Token released their third album ‘Take Me Back To Eden’ on Friday (May 19). Speaking about the band in a new interview with Allison Hagendorf, Corey Taylor said (via Loudwire): “I’ll call them metal, but there’re so many different levels and layers [to the music]. There’s pop elements, there’s jazz elements.I love the fact that nobody really knows who they are. I love the fact that they don’t want to be known.”
“There are hints of early, early Slipknot there,” he continued. “At first we were like, ‘Nope. You get nothing. This is what you get, you figure it out. We’ll let the music speak for ourselves’.”
Speaking to NME earlier this year, Taylor said Sleep Token were one of a handful of new heavy bands still inspiring him alongside Turnstile and Bad Omens. “You can feel them leaning into the passion. There’s a whole new generation of bands that are starting to come up that are carrying the flag for heavy music,” he said
He went on to deny being Sleep Token’s masked singer Vessel though. He added: “Listen, I’ve got more than enough going on. I don’t need a fourth band.”
Taylor went on to say that his upcoming solo album ‘CMF2’ was written in response to the current state of rock music. “There are some good bands out there but for the most part, everything is so soft,” he explained. “It’s the exact opposite of what we had before, where people didn’t want to call themselves ‘rock’. Now, people call themselves rock when it’s actually way more alternative. When are these artists going to take the gloves off? Stop holding back and just fucking go for it.”
‘CMF2’ is due for release September 15 via Taylor’s own label Decibel Cooper, which is backed by BMG. Earlier this week, he shared the record’s first single ‘Beyond’.
Slipknot are due to headline Download Festival next month alongside Metallica and Bring Me The Horizon while Sleep Token will play Reading & Leeds, alongside headliners Lewis Capaldi, Foals, Billie Eilish, The Killers, Sam Fender and Imagine Dragons.