Arcadia, in case you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient Greece, is one of those words that seems to arrive trailing mist and the distant sound of panpipes. Originally, it referred to a real place - a mountainous, rather underpopulated province in the Peloponnese. The landscape was rugged, the goats numerous, and the human footprint minimal. From this relatively humble geography sprang a grand idea: Arcadia became shorthand for an unspoiled pastoral paradise, a place where shepherds might muse poetically beneath olive trees and the world - just for once - might behave itself. Merriam-Webster defines Arcadia with brisk simplicity as "a region or scene of simple pleasure and quiet." Which is technically correct, though it fails to capture the wistful sigh the word tends to evoke. Enter Sleep Token, the masked, genre-defying British band led by the mysterious figure known only as Vessel. Their fourth album, Even In Arcadia, plunges into this idea of paradise, not with idyllic flutes but with thunderous drums and aching vocals.

The title track is a slow-burning meditation on love's refusal to remain uncomplicated. Vessel suggests that even in paradise, sorrow has found its way in.

"Even In Arcadia" anchors an album that veers away from the more mythological storytelling of Sleep Token's earlier work, which explores the dynamic between Vessel and the deity Sleep. Instead, it ventures into something altogether more vulnerable and human. Here, paradise isn't Edenic perfection; it's something softer, sadder, more lived-in. A place where beauty and pain sit side by side. The album artwork drives this home with crests festooned with both flowers and weaponry.