Sleepless Empire

Sleepless Empire, the band's first album of new songs since Black Anima in 2019, was conceived while they were remaking Comalies in 2022. Cristina Scabbia has said they stopped writing during the pandemic and that Comalies XX brought back their love of songwriting. Writing and recording took place in Milan and in Como, where SPVN Studios is based, and Marco Coti Zelati produced as before. The line-up was Scabbia, Andrea Ferro, Coti Zelati on bass, guitars and synths, and Richard Meiz on drums; guitarist Diego Cavallotti's exit was announced in June 2024. The band describe the album as the confusion of a generation caught in a digital world that never stops, where social media eats away at identity, and as a cry to win oneself back. Ferro has said his is the first generation to have known the analogue world and to live in the digital one, and that a society on its phones from morning to night is the empire of the title. Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, a friend since both bands played the same stage at Ozzfest in 2004, appears on "Hosting the Shadow"; for "In The Mean Time" the band wanted a rawer rock voice and invited Ash Costello of New Years Day. The Neapolitan illustrator Roberto Toderico drew the cover by hand, a choice Scabbia tied to her objection to passing off AI output as creativity. The singles began with "Never Dawn", written for the board game Zombicide: White Death and released in June 2023, then "In The Mean Time" in April 2024, "Oxygen" with the album's announcement that October, "Gravity" in January 2025 and "I Wish You Were Dead" the day before release. Century Media Records released the album on 14 February 2025, two days after Marquee's Japanese edition. The limited box set adds an oracle game played with two twelve-sided dice. It reached No. 30 on the Billboard Italy Albums Top 100 and No. 17 on Top Album Sales in the United States, and after release came a lyric video for "In Nomine Patris" in September and a "Hosting the Shadow" video in December.