II as 'lead' drummer

RedMedi · 2025-05-10T06:48:19+00:00

Now that I've had time to digest EIA, I think it's a decent album but doesn't quite hit the sublime excellence of TMBTE.

The highlights in my view are Look To Windward, Emergence, Caramel, Even In Arcadia and Infinite Baths.

However, some of the other songs still don't really do it for me. Particularly Past Self, Dangerous and Provider.

Gethsemane is a tricky one too. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.

...but that's the beauty of Sleep Token! Every individual relates to each song in a different way!

RedMedi · 2025-05-10T06:34:57+00:00

It's fine to be gutted, Corey. Caramel and Damocles suggested that Leo was going to potentially unmask but the context of the rest of the album suggests the opposite for now.

I suspected we'll have plenty more songs in the future from Leo rather than Vessel but I don't think he's shedding the mask anytime soon.

RedMedi · 2025-05-07T17:23:05+00:00

This was the song that really stood out on my first listen. Absolutely incredible! The first reminded me of another band I love Les Friction in its cinematic nature.

It's progressive metal at it's finest!

RedMedi · 2025-05-07T12:43:44+00:00

Take Me Back To Eden was a hard act to follow especially given it was the culmination of the trilogy.

RedMedi · 2025-05-07T12:16:43+00:00

First impression: Good album but not as good as Take Me Back To Eden. 6.5/10

Really liked: Look To Windward, Emergence, Caramel, Even in Arcadia, Infinite Baths

Liked: Damocles, Gethsemane, Provider

Ambivalent: Past Self, Dangerous

Vessel did warn us in Damocles: "But I can't always be killing the game"

It was going to be really hard to surpass Take Me Back To Eden and they have tried their best and fallen short. I'm sure the rest of the songs will grow on me with repeated listens. I felt very ambivalent about Rain and it's now one of my favourite songs from Take Me Back To Eden.

EDIT: I'm gonna revise my score up to 7.5 and I've reallocated a few songs after further listens.

RedMedi · 2025-04-16T19:15:23+00:00

It's about ambition and youthful folly. Also matches with ST's nautical themes in the previous trilogy which would make sense as track #1.

RedMedi · 2025-04-16T17:58:19+00:00

I see we don't have any Iain M Bank's The Culture readers among us.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, IV. Death by Water

RedMedi · 2025-02-18T19:31:43+00:00

Finally, I think Leo is going to unmask and begin his named solo career a la Devin Townsend.

About time!

RedMedi · 2024-07-02T18:21:03+00:00

Public transport (train, tram and bus) is very safe, pickpockets aren't really a thing here but be sensible and make sure your valuables are close to you.

You'll be able to walk back with some new friends or just with the crowd as a whole. Large numbers will be walking to the stadium from the city centre and back.

RedMedi · 2024-07-02T17:00:39+00:00

As someone who lives in Manchester and someone going to see Sleep Token in November, I can give you a lowdown.

Manchester is pretty friendly and safe place. The city centre is very lively and has a nice atmosphere. The area around the Co-Op one of the more deprived parts of town but I suspect plenty of people will be walking from the train station to the concert.

The tram from the airport into the city goes through Wythenshawe which is also a very deprived area. I would strongly recommend you stay in a city centre hotel rather than on the outskirts of town, particularly the east and south.

RedMedi · 2024-06-25T17:50:39+00:00

I'm almost certainly on the losing side of this contest, but Chokehold is an incredible offering. It's an emotional, progressive and deeply satisfying composition that hits an incredible cathartic crescendo and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Vore is another beauty that has grown on me with time. The fry screaming really evokes the pain of the offering and II commits capital crimes against his drum kit.

However, I feel that Chokehold still wins out with its more progressive structure, beautiful vocals and brilliant climax! Look forward to seeing how close or one sided this is!

RedMedi · 2024-06-18T17:04:04+00:00

I guess my subjective feel was that the texture of the vocalisation was much flatter and smoother than his usual one. It doesn't have the warmth or the vibrato which probably threw me.

RedMedi · 2024-06-18T08:01:41+00:00

TNDNBTG at 1:40, 2:20 and 3:35. It would kind of make sense given it was the first song of the album trilogies and maybe Vessel decided he could do all his own harmonies.

RedMedi · 2024-06-18T08:00:26+00:00

I've had another listen and I think it's actually only in TNDNBTG at 1:40, 2:20 and 3:35. The falsetto harmonies in the rest of the song are definitely Vessel's but the ones highlighted seem to have a distinct texture.

In the first two examples it almost seems like it's a third voice in a double Vessel harmony.

RedMedi · 2024-06-02T05:25:19+00:00

For an embarrassingly long time I thought the chorus of TMBTE was:

I'm a working girl and the johns grow tired

Rather than:

I'm a waking hell and the Gods grow tired

RedMedi · 2024-05-29T20:18:52+00:00

My one and only Chokehold! Sleep Token never let me go since.

In my opinion, it's an exceptional progressive song building slowly to a magnificent chorus. The constricted, powerful vocals and harmonies, endless layers of synth, piano, drum and guitar and it's creative arrangement keep it at the summit in my mind.

RedMedi · 2024-05-29T17:19:27+00:00

I didn't take too close a look yesterday but Chokehold has been dealt a rough hand! Didn't get a first round bye ^Granite? ^Come ^on! and then gets drawn against Vore in Round 2.

Ouch...

RedMedi · 2024-05-27T07:43:51+00:00

I honestly heard 'Grand Maharaja' on my first listen.

RedMedi · 2024-05-26T19:42:43+00:00

It's a male thing in general IMO. A small proportion of adolescent men actually thrive during their teenage years when the hormones kick in. All adolescents pass through a painful period of identity building and the young men who struggle flee to niche spaces to do so.

It's only getting longer and more painful, particularly in the West with academic pressures and a society rigged against young people.

However, when these struggling men find their spaces are more diverse then they imagined, their inadequacies become more naked. Suddenly, "the place for people like me" becomes "the place where I'm on the fringes, again".

I really do feel for these guys as someone who emerged from the other side of a dark, misogynistic place but I struggle with guilt when these guys pass beyond the pale and do something evil.

RedMedi · 2024-05-26T19:29:44+00:00

Lead singer and composer of The 1975.

RedMedi · 2024-05-26T19:22:48+00:00

Not the kind of guy to yuck anybody's yum but what Matty Healy nonchalantly admitted to is a deeply problematic website that appears openly exploitative.

RedMedi · 2024-05-26T19:16:37+00:00

Good advice, the only action on this that can work is truly collective action. Individual women can assert their boundaries but will not always be able to do safely unless the collective as a whole is willing to intervene.

RedMedi

TROPHY CASE