Sleep Waker announce new album ‘Alias’

May 16, 2021 James Weaver

SLEEP WAKER have announced a new album!

Titled Alias, the upcoming album from the Michigan-based metalcore band is their brand new full-length offering and is scheduled to be released in July this year, making their label debut at new home UNFD.

Alias intends to be is the sort of album that asks listeners to examine who we are, how we quantify our reality, and what it means to be alive. “When I had the idea to start the band, I had insomnia and sleep paralysis,” says drummer Frankie Mish. “It was a big thing in my life. I had the name SLEEP WAKER, I was playing around with logos and stuff like that. And then Hunter [Courtright, vocals] mentioned he had insomnia as a kid. So we bonded over that connection. Each release has had a theme built around experiences we’ve had in dreams, or concepts based around sleep. [2017 debut EP] Lost In Dreams established that, and [2018’s debut album] Don’t Look At The Moon was all about sleep paralysis. But we tag-teamed the lyrics this time. I write from a lot of my personal experiences of nightmares and dreams. Overall, our overarching theme has always been the band name itself.”

“I’ve had hallucinations,” Courtright reveals. “I’ve had the feeling of someone sitting on my chest, and monolithic figures staring at me from the corner of my bedroom. That stuff’s definitely still interwoven throughout the album. But things really took a shift this time. On this record, my lyrics are quite literal and personal. Everything I wrote was either situational to my life, or about how a person can be changed by a life event or circumstance, thus creating an alias.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, SLEEP WAKER have released a new music video for the first song lifted from the upcoming release; Distance. “Distance is about loss – more specifically, losing someone very close to you,” says vocalist Hunter Courtright. “For me, it’s about witnessing my grandfather struggle with dementia. His passing really hit me and it was a very hard and emotional experience. I immediately knew I needed an outlet for that feeling and started working on the lyrics that eventually turned into Distance.”

Drummer Frankie Mish adds, “when writing Distance, we realised this was the perfect song to round off this album. We had most of the songs finished and this demo just sat there as a lead and a chorus, and the further we got into the process, the more we realised we really needed something to stick out as a major emotional point in the album. Once that clicked, the song just easily flowed out.”

Watch the official music video for Distance here: