Sleep Token released This Place Will Become Your Tomb on September 24, 2021, through Spinefarm Records. Their second studio album reunited them with producer George Lever after Sundowning, but the circumstances had changed sharply. Work began as lockdown took hold, leaving the musicians making a record without knowing when they could return to the stage.
That uncertainty surrounded an album with room for both heavy arrangements and a song built entirely around the human voice. “Fall For Me,” released a week before the album, set aside instrumental accompaniment for an a cappella performance from Vessel. It occupied the sixth position on the 12-song record, immediately before “Alkaline,” placing one of its sparsest recordings at the center of the sequence.
Lever had experienced a very different working environment while making Sundowning in 2019. In a 2025 Metal Hammer oral history, he recalled taking that album from demos to finished masters in 12 weeks. They worked every day, sometimes from seven in the morning until nine at night, but also spent time swimming, exercising and recovering together. For Lever, the friendships were part of what made the demanding schedule work. He remembered those three months as the happiest period of his life.
The follow-up began in March 2020. Speaking on The Metal Roundup in 2025, Lever recalled being at Middle Farm Studios when lockdown began. There was no clear picture of when the record would be finished or released, or whether concerts would be possible afterward. The sessions carried on under conditions he remembered as difficult for everyone involved.
Lever also told Metal Hammer that the pressure complicated the emotional work. He described songs concerned with love, loss and remorse, written to draw listeners closer to the artist. Making that connection was difficult amid the fears surrounding the pandemic. “It’s hard to do that when it feels like the world is going to end,” he said.
By June 2021, Sleep Token were introducing the album in front of an audience. They headlined the second stage at Download Pilot, where “Alkaline” received its live debut. “The Love You Want” followed as the second single in August, with “Fall For Me” arriving in September. Those releases gave listeners three songs ahead of the full album, a different approach from Sundowning, whose tracks had appeared individually at fortnightly intervals before its release.
Sleep Token left the meaning of “Fall For Me” open. Spinefarm’s announcement explicitly said the band would provide no explanation of the song or its video. The release itself carried the message, continuing a presentation in which music and imagery took the place of conventional interviews.
That November, Sleep Token returned to the road for eight dates across the UK and Ireland, with A.A. Williams supporting all except Dublin. Kerrang!’s retrospective reported that the UK run sold out, including the 2,000-capacity O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. The response there extended to the album’s quiet opening: people in the stands were moshing while Vessel played the piano introduction to “Atlantic.”
