Sleep Token - Even In Arcadia (May 9th 2025) • Page 8

I’m usually not one to get worked up over lyrics in general, but man, he’s really going through it on Gethsemane. That’s pretty heartbreaking.

 

This is projected to go #1 on billboard with 125K first week sales

 

deserved

 

Alright I finally decided to give them a shot by listening to this album

And yea they aren't for me, but I can see why others would really like them! I just can't get past the vocals and I don't really care for some of their song structures. Glad I gave them a shot so I could know definitively though, they pop up in a bunch of circles I'm in.

 

For what it's worth I loved their last record and pretty much hated most of this

 

Emergence is really good though

 

I don't listen to this band but the Pitchfork score is wild. This might be their lowest score in years?

 

Wow that's something. I can't say I entirely disagree with the sentiment of it but I wouldn't put it as harshly.

I will say that calling them a metal band, or at least this album a metal album, seems like mostly a disservice to them and setting the listener up for failure in expectations. I'd hardly consider the album a metal album, which is fine but even Pitchfork listing the genre for the album as metal seems like they're also trying to, once again, set it up for failure.

 

greatest pitchfork review of all time instantly

"Benson Boone with a Spirit Halloween gift card" is insane

 

I probably don’t need to even read it if they’re listing this as metal lol.

 

personally until they stop marketing themselves as a metal band I think it's appropriate to keep critiquing them as one

 

Do they actually market themselves as one?

 

Based on this album it certainly doesn't feel like they want to, but I also don't follow their social media stuff

 

with all due respect they are literally headlining Download Festival in a month

 

Yeah, they’re massive. I kinda can’t believe how massive they are too.

 

Honestly despite my disappointment with this record you gotta love to see it. Authentic or not this band will absolutely be a gateway for kids to get into heavy music and that's sick.

 

I was fully on hate train up until last fall when I put Eden on to see if I missed something and like something in my brain clicked. I enjoy a good chunk of this one too.

 

Fucking hell lmao

 

To be fair the review was written by the same person who wrote this so of course it wasn't going to go well.

https://www.stereogum.com/2258777/metal-sleep-token-bad-omens-spiritbox/columns/sounding-board/

 

The pitchfork review is spot on with my thinking when I listened to the album.

I just don't think the songs are good. There's different elements of some songs that are cool, but there's basically no song I can listen to start to end that is memorable to me.

 

I do agree with the thing Pitchfork say about the opening track changing direction about 6 times over the course of 8 minutes, and listening to the album for the first time all the way through it does definitely feel like that - I don't know when one song has ended and another has started and apart from the singles I didn't recognise choruses etc.

 

i get the sentiment of the Pitchfork review, and agree that the album - and their sound in general - has never primarily been rooted in metal like other modern acts. there's plenty to critique about the record, but i just don't really see how continuing the metal purism/death of the genre conversation is helpful (especially from the guy who wrote the Stereogum piece last year where he pretty much said the exact same thing).

just because a metal-lite masked band is climbing the charts doesn't mean the genre is lacking in more traditionally-metal releases, and i don't think any of those acts give a fuck about chart success (even if they deserve it). it's just a boring, somewhat hyperbolic conversation at this point. the Benson Boone line was pretty funny though.

 

I do agree with the review that the structures could be better, and it does feel like songs with just a lot of parts instead of verses and choruses, but it feels disingenuous to compare them to Linkin Park, Metallica, Slipknot and System of A Down. For better or worse, Sleep Token has always sounded like this to a degree. They don't write overly catchy stuff, and they double downed on that a little here with very little in the way of a chorus.

I'm also tired of the hate because they aren't metal enough. The ONLY thing remotely metal about this is the very brief moments of harsh vocals and djent guitars, which amounts to what, 10-15 minutes of the hour-long runtime? This is a pop album that sometimes uses 8 string guitars. If metal wasn't chomping at the bit so hard to have some mainstream bands, I don't think people would care as much that this isn't as metal as they would like it to be.

 

Regardless of how mixed I am towards this album and the previous one, so much of the criticism rooted at the band feels reactionary and in bad faith. It's hard to take it seriously, even though good points can be made here and there.

I agree with most of the review btw, though I wouldn't be that harsh as I do find the album to be a slight improvement over the previous. I also don't care about the amount of metal found in it, I just wish the songs would have more interesting arrangements, take more interesting turns or the vocals (an improvement over the last one though) would be more dynamic regardless of the genre.

 

are they really this big? I ask because in comparison to Ghost, who I thought was pretty "huge" as far as "metal" goes only did 86K sales their opening week.

Though tbf I have been pushed more ads about this band when I get on FB more than I was Ghost. Gotten more Ghost stuff on IG though.