Sleep Waker is the pseudonym used by drummer Frankie Mish, who writes music based on personal experiences of dreams and nightmares. “When I had the idea to start the band, I had insomnia and sleep paralysis,” he said. Later, vocalist Hunter Courtright mentioned that he also suffered from insomnia, and the two musicians bonded over this shared experience. Each of their albums had a dream-related theme, as indicated by the titles of their 2017 debut album Lost in Dreams, and the 2018 follow-up Don’t Look At The Moon. The later was, in fact, dedicated to sleep paralysis.
Hunter has also been experiencing sleep paralysis-induced hallucinations. As the singer said in speaking about the band’s new album, which will be released on July 23: “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.” This band’s new album will be called Alias.
According to Broadway World magazine, the music shows the guys deeply immersed in the REM sleep phase, with their songs raising questions about who we are and what is real, whether we are really awake or just experiencing a certain construct of reality. The new album is especially relevant in the context of the boundaries between life, art and one’s own experience becoming increasingly blurred.
The band records music in the genre of nu-metalcore, so fans of romantic pop melodies are unlikely to find these songs appealing. There are no lullabies to be found here. The music is about nightmares and the horror of sleep paralysis.
