r/SleepToken

I’m baccckkkkkkkk🤪 (posting this as the summoning is playing on my loud speakers and proud to announce sleep token has officially jumped to the top slot on my Spotify and overtaken Ed Sheeran. Worship🙌🏼 god, I missed yall!

Sooo I wish I could say I was getting good at predicting the consensus but you guys kept me on my toes with this one. Close call between distraction and Damocles which I kinda figured but guess who took the win? The fucking Apparition. Now I MUST listen to this song and comb through it to see what all the fuss is about cuz what?🤯

Anywho, finally we have arrived at day 9. I assume since we took a two day break you guys had time to think out your answer already? Right? No? Ah, we’ll see. Here are the track 9’s. I chose an Ep track to stand in for Arcadia!

Sugar

Descending

DYWTYLM

Nazareth

Knowing you guys are on a sugar free diet from snubbing caramel I’m betting sugar will get similar treatment 🤪 I joke, I joke. This one was sorta easy for me. I love Nazareth, his voice is hella seductive and that falsetto over the “tonight’s?” Ohhh don’t get a girl started. DYWTYLM is one that recently became another favorite. One day I was listening to it on the way to go see BMTH and it just HIT. The fact I know he’s singing this to his reflection and the way it is so relatable to what millions of people think and feel about themselves? Genius. He really does act as a “vessel” for human emotion, which now I’m saying that I think is the whole point at the core of what sleep token IS. Wow. Or could just be a dude singing about a girl who broke his heart but either way it slaps. Umm so yeah DYWTYLM is my pick here.

What’s yours?

I’m 8 weeks TikTok free and unfortunately it meant deleting my prized collection of ST videos 🥲

I’m looking for a specific performance where Vessel was doing these insane vocal runs during Hypnosis. He normally does vocal runs on this song, but this specific performance was something all together different.

It was soulful and spoke to your bones. It made my soul sing from joy. I’ve scoured IG and can’t find it.

When EiA came out and I saw the reviews I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I genuinely did not understand how people could listen to Gethsemane or Look to Windward and not feel moved, or literally transported into another world. Maybe it's because I don't understand anything about music theory, so I can't criticize a song on the technicalities of music composition, but the thing I value most in music are the lyrics. I can understand when a song has bad/lazy lyrics, I criticized a lot of the songs on EiA for some questionable lyrical choices, but there's people out there tearing this album down so much that it makes me wonder if we even listened to the same album. Don't even get me started on TMBTE because I think that album is genuinely perfect and I understand the criticism even less.

I really love playing Damocles, not sure why. Maybe because it already has piano built-in. Anyway, hope you like it :)

Provider steals the win for the track 7’s and absolutely no one is shocked. It’s not exactly poetry which we know he’s capable of crafting, but clearly we love when he shows his fun and cheeky side and I hope he does it more!

Alright moving right along to day 8. This one was slightly easier than the last, but I still always find myself struggling between two songs 😬 the significance of the track order across all four albums needs to be studied because I’m seeing patterns here🤔 anywho, here are the track 8’s

Gods

Distraction

The apparition

Damocles

Gods, while good, has nothing on their other heavy bangers and certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the other songs in the category so it’s going to the bottom for me. Same for the apparition, not really a fan of this one either. I don’t skip it, but eh. I found myself torn between the masterpiece that is Distraction and Damocles. Both beautiful, both meaningful. His vocals on distraction especially in the beginning during the first verse make my eyes water immediately. He just has such a way of making his emotions pour into his voice, it almost sounds like he’s whining sometimes but in the best and most beautiful way. Distraction is my baby. But then there’s Damocles. His most honest and authentic track in the entire discography. Him worrying about being forgotten and what will happen to his legacy like oh my god it makes me feel everything he’s feeling. So for this I am going to give it to Damocles

Also side note: I may wait to post day 9 on Sunday because the internet is going to be FLOODED with reports and posts about this ridiculous Taylor swift and Travis kelce wedding this weekend and I don’t want my post to get buried and us miss out. Thoughts?

Without further ado, select your favorite track 8 😘

Initially on my listen of Nazareth, (and specifically the verse about the tape, gun, and mirror), I thought this was literally Sleep demanding that Vessel shoot his girlfriend to prove he will give up on everything and devote himself to Sleep.

However, lately I have been toying with the thought that the songs are thematically grouped, not nessesarily chronologically grouped.

TW for the usual stuff, sh etc.

We know Sleep thrives on emotional pain and turmoil. Sleep is arguably either a narcissist or psychopath, possibly both. In my personal experience surviving an abusive narcissist, they are never content simply hurting their victims. They want to inflict their own pain and twisted self into them. To mess up the innocent the way they are broken inside.

The line reads "see if she can guess what a hollow point does to a naked body", however nowhere does it say *her* body. We infer from Atlantic that Vessel may have, at some point, attempted to end things.

My thought is, what if that was the events of Nazareth? Through Sleep's constant manipulation, Vessel snaps- taping his girlfriends mouth shut "eat the tape", shoving her into the bathroom, following her in, and firing on himself. That would leave anyone traumatized- trauma that (and this is a bit of a stretch) Sleep could potentially feed on.

I feel it doesn't break the narrative either- when I was first discovered sh-ing, my abuser once put a kitchen knife on the table in front of me and screamed at me to do it- if thats what I want so badly. However, my abuser was not a primordial diety and I was like 10 so obviously I had a different reaction but I digress, point was that feels exactly like something Sleep would enjoy. "F\*\*\* her up" and "show you what you look like from the inside" all at once.

Sleep feeds on Vessel, and seemingly his pain, and Sleep's cocky, gloating attitude and almost reassuring tone in Jericho still feel to me like if this alternative interpretation of Nazareth happened, that would also quite fit the bill.

Thoughts?