Every band that makes it has that one album. That career-changing moment that propels them to the next level. And for , it was their third release, 2017’s .
The Sheffield crew’s promise had been clear all along. With 2010 EP , 2012’s excellent debut, , and their criminally underrated second album, 2015’s , they’d proved their belligerent, bruising could unite rooms and lungs. A juggernaut of a record that sounded purpose-built for arenas, was the sound of a band starting to test the boundaries of their sound, introducing a ton of melody into their punk-infused savagery, and constituted a massive step towards metal’s upper echelons.
The album was written and recorded during a period of intense change for While She Sleeps. In 2015, they’d started renovating a 19th-century industrial warehouse in Sheffield’s Kelham Island neighbourhood, building their own Six Audio studio and band HQ with their bare hands. “We watched so much YouTube,” remembers guitarist and vocalist Mat Welsh.
“My partner would wake up at night and I’d be on my phone, watching Craig [Phillips] from show me how to hang a door. She’d be like, ‘What are you doing?’ And it was always the most boring response of, ‘I’m looking up how to fit UPVC windows.’” Feeling like they didn’t belong on their major label, Sony Music, Sleeps left to go it alone in 2016, and crowdfunded via the now-defunct PledgeMusic platform.
“We’re from that part of the music scene where you go from f.