While She Sleeps: Knowing Your Worth
From the very beginning, Sheffield metalcore titans WHILE SHE SLEEPS have always sought to forge their own path, all the while including the people who make it all possible as much as they can. When the pandemic hit in 2020, they found themselves not quite at a loss, but certainly in unfamiliar territory. Their response to it – a move they’d already been planning for some time – was to launch the Sleeps Society, their own Patreon page where fans can pay a monthly subscription for rewards and perks, the exact nature of those depending on the subscription tier (i.e. amount paid) and what the band themselves offer.
To understand why they did this and why it made sense to do it now, we have to cast our minds back to 2016, when the band announced that their third album You Are We would be entirely fan-funded through a PledgeMusic campaign. Fans could pre-order the album through the service and when it was ready, it and any paid-for perks would be delivered. “I think that we learned a lot from the You Are We album cycle and on that, we did a pledge campaign but we basically fulfilled everything ourselves,” vocalist Loz Taylor admits as we’re sat together ahead of their first of three sold out gigs at The Underworld in support of latest album Sleeps Society. “All the bundle packages and all that, looking after the pledge and doing the media for it and all that stuff, so it was crazy and it was a big deal,” he continues. But that didn’t dissuade them – its success emboldened them, now knowing there was a way for the band to be sustainable despite the collapse in revenue from the advent of streaming services.
True to form, rather than taking credit themselves for this, they know the secret to their success is their fans, thanks to the inclusive atmosphere they’ve always wanted to foster. “It’s what we used to have conversations when we were really young about,” Loz explains, “when I joined WHILE SHE SLEEPS I just kind of said, like, I want to be able to speak more about like, what I’ve actually experienced and stuff that I can actually feel rather than trying to be really heavy or all death metal just for that reason.” He continues, “what went alongside that was we always wanted to try and create a community surrounding the band that was reflective of the message that we give out.” Looking back, it seems that WHILE SHE SLEEPS have had that from day one, simply by bringing their fans in instead of separating themselves off as aloof artists and Loz echoes that sentiment. “We’ve always wanted people to just have a beer-swilling, push-pitting really good time. So I’m really glad that’s what we’ve managed to create!”
The success of their PledgeMusic campaign led them to learn lessons around the minutiae of pledge fulfilment but also gave them the confidence that a better way of doing this was possible, that they could contend with a music industry where incomes have collapsed and still find their own way forward. “I think we’re one of the first bands to sort of make a success out of the model that we’ve made and implement those things and sort of, let other bands in on what we’re doing and letting them try it out for themselves,” Loz explains of their fan-funded model. He praises their fans, the ones that have made this all possible too. “I know every band will, like, turn around and say their fan base is the best fan base, but the guys that support WHILE SHE SLEEPS, if they’re into it then they love it and they respond so positively to the messages that we put out there. For example like, we’re going independent and we need your support.” The success of the model is something that they’ve been very keen on paying back, not only to the fans either.
That desire only grew more urgent with the pandemic and the restarting of live shows. Loz is clear that he wanted the band to give back to the fans but also, “smaller venues have probably suffered the most through COVID. A lot of local venues have closed down and been forced to shut up. So the main thing was that like, if we put on a run of smaller shows on the release of [latest album Sleeps Society] then hopefully, we can come in and support some smaller venues,” as he describes their decision. Compared to their last pre-pandemic tour that saw them playing to crowds in the thousands, this particular show at The Underworld (capacity 500) will be – as Loz describes the run of shows – “really intimate, really sweaty, really punk rock!” He expands on that, saying, “there’s a definite disconnect between playing bigger stages and, you know, being more close and personal with the audience and I think that we’ve missed that.”
This hasn’t only been a chance to give back to fans and venues either; with the pandemic leading to a total collapse in the live sector, their entire touring crew were out of work, something they were keen to rectify. Thanks to the Patreon and the generosity of the Sleeps Society, they could do that. “The Patreon actually enabled us to bring back our touring crew, and give them jobs – paid jobs, which is incredible,” he says, given that their main concern after keeping the band afloat was “trying to get our touring crew who were then out of work for best part of eighteen months, get them into our sort of warehouse or wherever helping out with the record so that we could pay them a wage.”
It’s clear during the course of our conversation that the most important thing not only to Loz himself but WHILE SHE SLEEPS as a whole, is their independence and doing it for themselves and their fans, first and foremost. Their determination to support their crew and friends extended to the distribution of Sleeps Society itself; the band decided to go the independent route and supported their crew, even though this then meant that the vast majority of their sales didn’t count towards any kind of official chart placement. “We had our merch guy shipping out vinyls and record and all that short of shit,” Loz explains. “Because of the way we distributed the record from an independent body, we couldn’t then use those for chart registering. It’s far more important to look after the people that look after you. And what a cool thing the Sleeps Society and that connection that we have with our fans, and how passionately they feel about the band [for them] to dig a little bit deeper and support us actually brought back two, three, four of our working crew! So amazing stuff. And then yeah, I think we gained a bit of respect for being like, fuck the charts!”
WHILE SHE SLEEPS are one of the UK’s most successful metalcore bands, and that they’ve done it all entirely their own way, all the while finding how they can let fans feel more invested in the band they love, building a dedicated fanbase that wants to support them that way and keeping some of their touring crew employed during a global pandemic, just goes to show exactly why they’re not only successful, but loved by their fans and respected by the entire metal community.
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