With a new album, 'Self Hell', set for 2024, WHILE SHE SLEEPS are bringing the curtain down on their year with the latest taster to be taken from it, 'Down', featuring Alex Taylor of fellow Sheffield band Malevolence. We caught up with Sean Long and Mat Welsh to get the lowdown from the self-confessed "weird" band. Check out our latest Upset cover story.

Words: Steven Loftin.
Photos: Enzo Iriarte.

While She Sleeps are hurtling into 2024 with a new lease of life.

The Sheffield group's sixth album, 'Self Hell', is set to be an explosive return after the release of their fan-focused fifth outing, 'Sleeps Society', in 2021. This time, they're shaking their foundations.

"We've gone 17 years without an ounce of hate, and it's been lovely," guitarist and producer Sean Long says, smiling. "But we've never stirred the pot in any way because we just do what we do, and people love it. So there is for me a huge excitement - not to piss our fans off in any way - but just to get a bit of movement going and some talk and to stretch our legs so that we can do what we want and to remind people that we won't be making the same stuff all the time. That excites me more than pleasing the masses."

Admittedly, they weren't quite aware of what they were making when they were in the studio. Sean - along with guitarist Mat Welsh, vocalist Loz Taylor, bassist Aaron McKenzie, and drummer Adam Savage - only came up with the first single and title-track once all the others were done and dusted.

But now, in the cold light of day, the group are gleefully reckoning with having found their fan base a bit divided by the brash nu-metal of it all. "I don't think it's divisive," Sean says of the encompassing album. "I think 'Self Hell' was divisive, but it wasn't a conscious choice," he reckons. "This is just the way it turned out. And I think, in retrospect, everything we write is always a surprise to us at the end. When I listen to 'Self Hell' now, even I'm like, you know, this is something different for us. There are so many conscious decisions in the studio, but in retrospect, it's an unconscious process that creates this entity."

While the rest of the album remains an enigma, the two following singles offer a bit more of a glimpse into what's to come. 'Down' is a titan of a track featuring Malevolence's Alex Taylor ("Keeping it local," Mat nods), which also contains what Sean refers to as "potentially one of Loz's best screams he's ever done in his career." It's a brutal slab of melodic rock that swings its hips as much as it bangs its head, and its release is designed to keep fans on their toes. "I don't think anyone will understand the record until you have it," Sean reasons. "And I generally think that's what Sleeps have done from the beginning. Every song complements the next, which creates the album in itself."

Moving forward from 'Sleeps Society' involved upping sticks. While the band have built a studio setup (Six Audio) in Sheffield, this time around, they decided to take themselves out of their familiar environment. Heading to Metropolis Studios down in London, Mat explains, "It was a proper revisit of that feeling of when we first went to a studio over 10 years ago. When we went from making a record ourselves in a practice room to going into a proper studio, it's feeling a bit more like you're actually a musician."

Reckoning with imposter syndrome crops up on their latest offerings, but given the band's rise in recent years - including their largest headline show at London's Alexandra Palace - it would seem the lads are at least doing something right. "It feels like we're finally making real headway," Sean acknowledges. "And what we've been working for for our entire careers. It's so many people, it's 10,000 people, and all of our peers that we look up to have already done it, and they're fucking touring arenas and all this stuff. So to have that behind us while making music, it just makes you feel legit. It makes you feel like your hard work is paying off in the studio and in the physical world when you're doing gigs and stuff. So it's definitely a driving force behind the record."

Taking all of the above into account, a part of the band's reticence to lean into any form of ego from their success is because, as Sean mentions, "I think we're a weird band! I really do. The music that we make is weird. I don't think that we're professional. And I think this is what's been resonating from the very beginning of our career."

This facet translates into 'Self Hell' and its surrounding singles never feeling trite. As it unfolds, this new era of While She Sleeps bleeds with authenticity, an honourable move given it would be just as easy to kowtow to fads and pressures in the name of success. But that's not how While She Sleeps operates. Even if they wanted to, they'd find the formula of the five of them turning whatever they throw into the mixer coming out with their jagged-tooth touch.

"Even when we're talking about our own songs, I'm aware that there's something that we do when we put it all together; it just makes this weird sound - and it is weird," Sean laughs. "There's something about this imperfection and the elements of imperfection in it, which is, I think, what resonates with our fans because instead of putting out this polished fucking turd all the time, the structures are always a bit weird, or we might have forgotten to do an ending. It's this combination of this weirdness that I lean into more now, rather than like, how do you have the right kind of professional song that everyone else is doing, that's doing really well? Because we can't do that, we can only do this thing that turns out a little bit weird. And that's what I love about it," says Sean.

Mat adds: "If we made something super digestible, really easy to understand on the first listen, then it just wouldn't sound like us. We take time, and you listen to it again, you understand a bit more, and there are so many layers in the songs that as you listen to, you learn more."

The While She Sleeps story is rooted in the idea that "we got into this shit, probably subconsciously, because we all wanted to be free. We didn't want to do the normal life," Sean explains. And they've done a commendable job, turning five rapscallions into a formidable figure of UK rock. "We had this vision, and we wanted to do this together. But as you get older and you have responsibilities, and you've got to make money, you've got to pay your bills. It's important to me now for all of us to make sure that we are keeping some spirit of expression alive within us when we're making stuff."

This is why making the process of 'Self Hell' as collaborative as possible between the five of them was one of the most important aspects. "We're quite conscious now that we've blinked and gone from starting in the band and getting a little bit of traction, to suddenly being like, 'Oh, this is going well' to being like, 'Holy shit, we've been here 17 years!' and so on. I mean, we've done it more of our lives than we have been not doing it. And we're all like, in our 30s," Mat marvels. "We need to make sure when we're playing gigs that you're enjoying it, and you're drinking it in, and because suddenly 15 years have gone by. I mean, how long are you going to do it? So we've had that approach living in our heads a little bit in the writing and recording process that we're like, let's make sure we're not saving anything for the next one because what if we can't be arsed to do next one or what if we just don't want to? Let's make sure this has everything." ■