Sleep Token’s new single Damocles is quietly devastating, the track reveals itself like a scar under a sleeve—tender, aching, and very much still healing.
Released on April 25, 2025, Damocles is the final single from the upcoming album Even In Arcadia (out May 9 via RCA Records).
It follows the ethereal sorrow of Caramel and the atmospheric chaos of Emergence, but where those tracks swelled and spiralled, Damocles simply falls. Slowly. Repeatedly
What is Sleep Token’s Damocles about?
Sleep Token’s “Damocles” is about the silent pressure of fame, creative burnout, and the fear of losing oneself beneath success, symbolised by the Sword of Damocles.
Piano-led, stripped of the sprawling theatricality often expected of Sleep Token, the song offers no walls of reverb to shelter Vessel’s voice.
Every crack, every breath trembles openly, daring the listener to see the man behind the myth.
The Sword That Never Stops Hanging: What “Damocles” Really Means
What is the meaning behind Sleep Token’s “Damocles”?
Damocles captures the crushing weight of fame, the corrosion of creative spirit, and the silent suffocation that success can bring.
Vessel wields the ancient imagery of the Sword of Damocles — a blade suspended by a thread over a throne — as a metaphor for living under constant pressure, whether from fame, expectations, or inner turmoil.
In the original myth, Damocles envies the king’s luxury until he experiences firsthand the terror of power’s fragility.
Vessel’s Damocles is soaked in the same realisation: what looks like heaven from afar often feels like hell up close.
Vessel’s Sound Choices: A Symphony of Internal Collapse
The chord progressions are intentionally simple—“I know these chords are boring,” he sings—yet that’s part of the lyrical sleight of hand.
This is not about musical prowess; it’s about the collapse under its weight.
The production is warm, even comforting at first, but listen closely and you’ll notice the layers of dissonance beneath.
Soft synths, reverb-laced guitars, and analog textures hint at a world fraying at its edges.
2’s drumming is subtle but surgical, punctuating moments like internal tremors—nothing flashy, just necessary.
Damocles Lyrics Meaning: Between Collapse and Catharsis
The meaning of Damocles comes into brutal focus in its first line:
“I’ve been waking up under blades, blue blossom days.”
It’s not metaphor for metaphor’s sake—it’s a direct reference to the Sword of Damocles, an ancient image of power accompanied by inescapable danger. Vessel isn’t just referencing it; he’s living beneath it.
“No alabaster carvings or faces on a farthing would prevent my head from fading to black.”
Alabaster, softer than marble, symbolises fragility. A “farthing,” a nearly worthless coin, suggests that external markers of worth — statues, money, fame — cannot save him from internal collapse. It’s a brutal rejection of the shallow immortality fame offers.
Throughout the lyrics, there’s a recurring fear of being seen as a failure—“What if I can’t get up and stand tall?”—even while operating at the peak of visibility. There’s fame, and then there’s what it does to you.
“When the river runs dry and the curtain is called / How will I know if I can’t see the bottom?” conjures the aftermath of creative burnout.
The “curtain” could be the stage, but also the veil between Vessel and the world. When that lifts, what’s left?
“No golden grand pianos or voices from the shadows will do anything but feel the same” exposes the weight of expectation.
The trappings of grandeur feel like empty rituals when your internal world is eroding.
Interpretations vary—some hear a spiritual crisis, others a creative one—but they intersect at the same point: exposure.
This is not Vessel as the omniscient voice of Sleep Token’s mythos. This is him cracking under it.
Reddit threads have latched onto the line “Who will I be when the empire falls?” as a thesis statement for the song, and possibly the album.
It reads like a confrontation with the fear that once the ritual ends, there’s nothing sacred left.
Damocles doesn’t build toward resolution. It holds you in that moment before the sword drops.
Sleep Token Damocles Lyrics Explained: A Look at the Duality
Damocles isn’t about martyrdom. It’s about the ordinary, suffocating sadness that accompanies pressure — the creeping suspicion that maybe the thing you dreamed of achieving was just another way to imprison yourself.
This is a song that turns between two poles: the grandiosity expected of Sleep Token, and the plain emotional truth Vessel offers instead.
Even the structure reflects that duality. Choruses swell, only to dissolve into silence.
The final repetition—“Until the tape runs out on me”—feels like resignation.
It’s not about dying, but disappearing. What happens when the identity you’ve curated starts to smother the person underneath?
And that’s what Damocles ultimately is: not a cry for help, but a quiet documentation of slow, internal erosion.
It’s the kind of vulnerability that doesn’t ask for sympathy. It just hopes someone hears it.
Damocles is a ballad that breathes with the weight of fame, the fear of fading, and the overwhelming pressure of constantly being watched. In that way, it doesn’t just follow Caramel—it completes it.
As the last glimpse of Even In Arcadia before its release, Damocles feels less like a finale and more like a cliff’s edge. And Vessel? He’s standing on it, singing quietly, hoping the echo reaches back.
In Damocles, Sleep Token doesn’t just dissect the mythology of fame. They reveal what it costs to wear the crown, even if only for a moment.
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Sleep Token Damocles Lyrics
Verse 1
Well, I’ve been waking up under blades, blue blossom days
If only Damocles would hit me back
No alabaster carvings or faces on a farthing
Would prevent my head from fading to black
Pre-Chorus
And it feels like falling into the sea
From outer space in seconds to me
And I play discordant days on repeat
Until they look like harmony
Chorus
When the river runs dry and the curtain is called
How will I know if I can’t see the bottom?
Come up for air and choke on it all
No one else knows that I’ve got a problem
What if I can’t get up and stand tall?
What if the diamond days are all gone
And who will I be when thе empire falls?
Wake up alonе and I’ll be forgotten
Verse 2
Well, I know I should be touring, I know these chords are boring
But I can’t always be killing the game
No golden grand pianos or voices from the shadows will do anythin’ but feel the same
Pre-Chorus
And it feels like falling into the deep
From somewhere way up over the peaks
And I play discordant days on repeat
Until the tape runs out on me
Chorus
When the river runs dry and the curtain is called
How will I know if I can’t see the bottom?
Come up for air and choke on it all
No one else knows that I’ve got a problem
What if I can’t get up and stand tall?
What if the diamond days are all gone
And who will I be when the empire falls?
Wake up alone and I’ll be forgotten
Bridge
And nobody told me I’d be begging for relief
When what is silent to you feels like it’s screaming to me
Well, nobody told me I’d get tired of myself
When it all looks like heaven, but it feels like hell
Chorus
When the river runs dry and the curtain is called
How will I know if I can’t see the bottom?
Come up for air and choke on it all
No one else knows that I’ve got a problem
What if I can’t get up and stand tall?
What if the diamond days are all gone
And who will I be when the empire falls?
Wake up alone and I’ll be forgotten
