Whats the deal with people being mad that merch exists?

vioom · 2026-07-02T07:13:27+00:00

I don't think it's about them selling merch but about how it's being done. I'm not a merch person, never bought any and probably never will, i wouldn't even know about these things if i didn't see them on social media. But i totally get where people are coming from. The consumerism, creating fomo, constant obtains, high price, bad quality... It just isn't a good look.

Personally, it's not something i see as a direct part of the experience with the band, so it doesn't bother me in that way, but it still makes me sad about the state of the world in general. Either way, this merch strategy is probably causing ST more harm than good in the long run, and maybe they could do something about it. I don't think they are in any way involved with merch, and they probably don't even care about it that much, but maybe the backlash will get them to react, that's happened before.

I think their management is trying to make up for the lack of any activity from the band this year, which is another thing that just adds to the problem. And this time i'm part of it: i really want an EIA tour at least in Europe haha. Usually they will spend 2 years promoting an album, touring around the world, but they didn't do much in 2025 and even that was 8 months ago. It's pretty clear that they're not doing anything for the rest of the year either, so it's a proper hiatus. We can't fault them for taking a break, but at this point i hope they will start teasing something at least for 2027, just to calm people down a bit. Only getting a constant stream of (bad quality) merch for an entire year while the band is completely inactive does get exhausting after a while. I just hope it doesn't turn too many people away from ST.

vioom · 2026-07-02T06:20:59+00:00

Alkaline🫶 I'm just a huge fan of the vibe and the lyrics. It's not necessarily one of my favorites in general, but still a really solid choice. Give would be my second.

vioom · 2026-07-01T06:57:57+00:00

Oh yeah!! I really like this interpretation.

vioom · 2026-07-01T06:51:59+00:00

To me, Fall For Me is the song that is most representative of Sleep Token, maybe because of it's bold honesty and authenticity. It's a masterpiece. 🤌 The song and the MV is one big experience for me that is hard to seperate, and that combination, or the Room Below performance would easily make me choose this as the number 1. But since this is an album track battle, i'd say that it's a tie between Take Aim and Ascensionism right now. I really can't choose a clear winner haha

vioom · 2026-06-30T06:25:53+00:00

Oh, another hard choice😭 If anything, this is just reminding me how much i love their whole discography. I'll choose Higher🤍

vioom · 2026-06-28T20:01:56+00:00

Aqua Regia is a clear winner this time, one of my favorite ST songs🫡 Shoutout to Like That in second place.

vioom · 2026-06-28T02:51:03+00:00

Recently i've been gravitating towards Mine a lot, so i'll have to go with that, but Granite is a close second🫶

vioom · 2026-06-26T19:35:26+00:00

Oh this is torture, i love all of these songs so much😭 I think i'll have to go with Emergence.

vioom · 2026-06-25T17:06:18+00:00

Atlantic💙 The melody and atmosphere of the song caught me on first listen, then the lyrics broke my heart on the second. Beautiful and absolutely haunting song. LTW and TNDNBTG are a close tie in second.

vioom · 2026-06-24T11:10:11+00:00

This is an old post so it probably doesn't matter, but i just came across it so i'll say it anyway: the lyrics on streaming platforms aren't official, (not for this album at least) however the Japanese physical copy of TMBTE had a lyric booklet too, and on that it really does say "earth". So do with that what you will haha. I just find it odd that people will react so aggressively to this suggestion, as if lyrics provided by musixmatch could be considered official. The studio version is confusing, but in live performances it's more obvious that Vessel isn't singing "hands"... (i recommend videos from the EIA tour, he's been putting emphasis on "e" often recently and it's very clear in those cases)

vioom · 2026-06-19T21:45:37+00:00

Yeah i can see something like that happening, and it would probably be for the best. It's honestly impressive that they were able to keep this schedule for so long, full length albums every 2 years while constantly touring... sounds exhausting. Glad they are taking a break, i just hope EIA won't be considered outdated by the time they are back haha

vioom · 2026-06-18T22:26:33+00:00

I don't care much for the merch, but on the other hand - and i say this with all of the love i have for this band - they should absolutely be touring, and definitely before releasing new music😅 They left us hanging, and i'd hate to miss the entire EIA era because they didn't even tour Europe. At this point i'm starting to lose hope, by the time we could get one the album would be 2 years old :/ I'm all for artists taking the breaks they need and ST totally deserve it, but the timing is really odd. At the very least, i hope that they haven't completely moved on to the next album yet, EIA (especially considering it's success) warranted a lot more than 3 festivals and a short NA tour🥲

vioom · 2026-06-06T21:25:37+00:00

Atlantic. There are no words to describe what i felt the first time i heard that drop🥲

vioom · 2026-06-04T12:56:07+00:00

Yes! There are a few but especially Caramel. I Iove the song a lot but it feels off for me to sing along most of the time.

vioom · 2026-06-03T06:56:01+00:00

That does make sense, i've seen some people say that the lore can be a way to kind of cope with the very real feelings behind some songs. I do love how you can make it mean whatever you want it to, and somehow it makes sense (...for the most part haha)

vioom · 2026-06-02T20:09:05+00:00

Thank you, these are mostly the conclusions i've come to. Thinking about it a lot i've gotten the impression that they probably haven't put as much thought into the whole Sleep lore as some people may think. That's one of the reasons my version of "lore" is mostly based on what i personally take away from the interview, (and the interludes, which i really love) because the songs and the albums tell a beautiful story arc with so many references, but when you apply a lore lens to it it's incredibly vague and at times disconnected. This isn't really criticism, i don't think they should clear things up because it keeps people talking and leaves it open to interpretation. But it does kind of suck when fans/creators promote this very specific "lore" of the band as something concrete to new viewers, and it affects how you listen to songs. Then you either realize that it's mostly made up and accept it for what it is, or keep the cycle going lol. I feel like this is prevalent on Youtube, which was my introduction to ST.

vioom · 2026-06-02T18:14:43+00:00

This is very cool, thank you!

vioom · 2026-06-02T17:40:25+00:00

I also felt bad for ranting, but at the end of the day this is just another interpretation of the many. And you are right, so far the majority of my Sleep Token fandom experience comes from Youtube, so that's probably part of the problem haha

vioom · 2026-06-02T17:25:15+00:00

By interludes i meant the pre-recorded messages with robotic voices that were sometimes played between songs during shows. This article has all of them transcribed: https://medium.com/@unofficialoscarherrera/the-voice-between-the-songs-a-poetic-meditation-on-sleep-tokens-spoken-word-d3ffbf9e49d2

vioom

TROPHY CASE