Sympathy For the Vessel

I haven't been a Sleep Token fan for very long. It's been literally a month since I stumbled across their latest album "Even in Arcadia" and in that time I've done the very typical ADHD method of "getting into things":

Listen to Damocles. Get absolutely destroyed because you didn't realize just how long you've been holding shit in, and you suddenly feel like you'd give anything for that sword to just fall already... or to go back to being a goddamn peasant when things were simpler.
Listen to the entire album. Become intrigued. Listen again. Then look at the rest of the catalog.
Listen to every goddamn song they've ever put out. Let the sounds wash over you like a religious experience.
Declare: "This is my new favorite band." Do the thing you always do; buy a metric fuckton of merch, because you actually want the band members to know they're appreciated.
Seek out other fans. You live in Shit Splat, Arkansas, so your chances are slim locally. Enter the internet. Find the subreddit. The Discord. Talented TikTok cosplayers (some of whom can sing really fucking well).
Start noticing behavior that's... off. Not psychotic, but not normal. Sleep Token forehead tattoos. "Jerry" the flamingo sold as a plushie on Etsy. Thirsty TikTok comments.
Deep dive into Caramel. Realize it's a fucking banger and dark as hell. Also British as FUCK.
Start seeing the unhinged behavior. Question whether you even want to be associated with this fandom. Flashbacks to SuperWhoLock. Remember why you stopped going to comic cons.
Think to yourself:
"Jesus tapdancing CHRIST. If I had to stand next to these young girls and grown women shrieking like banshees, I'd lose my shit. These people have no concert etiquette. This must be what it felt like to enjoy Elvis or The Beatles back in the day. Wow. Just... wow."
Then find the really fucking unhinged behavior: doxxing band members, simping for Vessel like he's your personal boyfriend, sexually objectifying the band like construction workers catcalling a woman just trying to get to work.
Finally, decide enough is enough. Put your fingers to the keys. Let it out, because this shit is A LOT.

Mirror, Mirror at Stage Left. Show the Soul They've Left Bereft.

As you can probably tell from the "ADHD Stages of Fandom For The Mentally Unwell" that I've so carefully crafted above, I have hit the point in my appreciation for Sleep Token that has left me feeling...a bit gross. It's like when you meet someone and you think they're cool, but then you find out that they're a level 4 sex offender and you're questioning your own judgement. Or, in my case, you find a band that really resonates with you, and you feel sticky and gross just by being in the same spaces as some of the most deranged, completely unhinged fans you've ever seen in your entire life as a fan of rock ‘n roll and heavy metal.

Metal fans are notoriously super chill. I've been to a few actual metal shows (I'm not a huge 'get out there in the thick of it' kind of gal) and multiple punk shows, and the vibes are fucking impeccable. Lots of respect. If you fall down drunk or get underfoot in the pit, there's always a set of strong, calloused hands that are going to drag you up, a voice that asks "Hey, you good, dude?", and a nod of acknowledgement when you're finally on your feet and back to just vibing to the music. If you're a nazi or some other fascist piece of shit? You get Dead Kennedys lyrics screamed at you (NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!), punched in the face, and chased out of the pack like a diseased animal.

Like I said. Immaculate vibes.

Then...there's Sleep Token fans.

Now look, I'm not trying to paint the entirety of the fandom with the same brush. I'm not a Boomer complaining about Swifties / Millennials (when they're just bitching about Gen Z or Gen Alpha. I mean Jesus fuck, Brenda. Millennials have MORTGAGES. We have CAR PAYMENTS. We're trying to not sleep the wrong way, so our backs aren't fucked up for two weeks. Get your shit straight. Okay sidebar rant over.) I'm calling out toxic behavior that is goddamn disturbing as hell and frankly gives me the heebie-jeebies. It makes my skin crawl.

If there's enough of you, as a segment of a fanbase that an artist must call out your toxic behavior in a manner that is frankly entirely too fucking polite for the unhinged shit that y'all are doing? You're doing something WRONG.

That brings me to Caramel from the latest album "Even in Arcadia." Let's do a lyrical breakdown of this and maybe I can translate from "Quiet, Sensitive British Man" into "Disgusted American Aunt Energy" and give someone some pause about the absolutely mental things that are going on in this fandom. Because honestly? It's toxic. Like 30-year-old women sexually harassing 16-year-old Justin Bieber disgusting.

Let's begin, shall we?

Count me out like sovereigns, payback for the good times
Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine
I'm not gonna be there tripping on the grapevine
They can sing the words while I cry into the bassline

Count me out like sovereigns, payback for the good times is, in my opinion, Vessel saying: "This is the price I'm paying for the early days when I felt like I could actually just have this project, this piece of me and it be enough."

And then it gets darker. Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine. We're literally seeing the transition from respectful adoration that performers appreciate (roses thrown at their feet, bravos, calls for encore) to something that could metaphorically blow you to bits. If you haven't ever seen the effects of stepping on a landmine, let me regale you with a little tale:

One of my grandfathers served in Vietnam. He became best friends with one of the men in his unit. One day while walking through the jungles, his friend sets off a landmine because let's face it...the Viet Cong were incredibly effective guerrilla fighters. My grandfather was behind him. He lost his entire leg from the knee down and he wasn't even the one who hit the kill switch. His friend? All they found of him was his broken glasses and a fucking pinky.

If Vessel feels like his left foot is on a landmine, he is fucking petrified of what is going to happen when he moves next. It's becoming a life and death, fight or flight situation where raw, visceral fear has taken over. You can feel the sweat, the churning of the guts.

Wear me out like Prada, devil in my detail
I swear it's getting harder even just to exhale
Backed up into corners, bitter in the lens
I'm sick of tryna hide it every time they take mine

Vessel referencing a luxury brand? Eh? What is this? Well, it's not just a catchy lyric, I'll tell you that.

Prada is one of those brands that superficiality and vanity have been associated with. Remember when luxury bags used to be something besides a shitty knockoff? Remember when they were made with care? By hand? Careful stitching? With love even? You knew you were getting a good, quality product. Along come the masses who want the label, the association, the perceived elitism that comes with being someone who "gets it." It's giving Regina George, ladies, and that is not a good look. The devil is in the details and if you look at how this subspecies of Sleep Token fan acts in the wild, you will be completely bothered. Shooketh.

Backed up into corners, bitter in the lens...there are things that you cannot hide from the camera. The eyes will always betray your thoughts. I've seen lots of photographs over the years (especially those of myself) where you can just tell from the expression of the subject, the posture, they feel like a cornered animal. Scared. Exhausted. Pissed off. Tired of smiling, dancing, and being a fucking jester for the camera. The mask isn't just for the aesthetic by this point. It's also so you can't see how utterly devastating it is for the person being photographed.

So stick to me
Stick to me like caramel
Walk beside me till you feel nothin' as well

If the rest of this rantifesto has you feeling angry, frothing at the maw, wanting to hunt me down and "make me pay" well you are going to fucking hate what I have to say next. Because caramel in this lyric is not flattering at all. It's not asking you to cling to him. It's saying that you cling to him in a way that doesn't easily wash off. It's disturbing and it gets on everything else he touches.

If you think this is a call from Vessel to "stick with me, bestie! We're in this together!" you have got to be delusional. And have also apparently never gotten caramel on your hands. Listen, Auntie Gl1tchK1ss is no stranger to sweets. When you're eating it up in the beginning, it's fucking delicious. What you're not trying to do is have caramel on your hands, in your clothes, everywhere you fucking turn and being stuck with that gross feeling for what feels like an eternity. Because once you've overindulged? You feel sick. You want to scrub yourself raw until you kill even the nerves in your fingers because you're just so goddamn tired of feeling disgusting. You want the stink of it off you.

That's what you ultra-parasocial, terminally online psychotic assholes are doing to Vessel.

They ask me, "Is it goin' good in the garden?"
Say, "I'm lost, but I beg no pardon."
Up on the dice, but low on the cards,
I try not to talk about how it's harder now.

Now we're getting into the part where you can absolutely tell that Vessel feels like he has no right to complain. "Is it going good in the garden" reads like a polite, British version of "Well, how's life treating you? Things good?" And this poor man is absolutely living that stereotypical stiff upper lip in polite company so hard that beyond a very understated: "It's paying off right now, but I've got an absolutely shit hand and I'm just praying nobody calls my bluff because I am going to fold like a house of cards."

Can I get a mirror side-stage?
Looking sideways at my own visage, gettin' worse
Every time they try to shout my real name just to get a rise from me
Acting like I'm never stressed out by the hearsay

And here it is. He's losing touch with himself. Not recognizing his own face when things keep escalating and he must keep pretending that "Everything is Fine," "Don't Panic!" Bless his heart, he's having one extraordinarily long Thursday.

I guess that's what I get for tryna hide in the limelight
Guess that's what I get for having 20/20 hindsight
Everybody wants eyes on 'em, I just wanna hear you sing that top line

Now we're hitting the biggest realization of all. It's very much a: "I just wanted to make this, have the people who listen to it appreciate it, give you something you can relate to and vibe to. And now I feel like an idiot for even doing this. Fuck me, I guess." The meteoric rise has not been kind to this man's mental health.

And if you don't think I mean it, then I understand
But I'm still glad you came, so let me see those hands

This is pretty self-explanatory. Most people who aren't famous forget that artists and musicians like Vessel aren't a commodity for your personal consumption. They're not dancing along to the rhythm for your amusement. And here's where it feels like he is just resigning himself to his fate. Throw your hands up, let's get this show over with so I can go backstage and collapse from the complete exhaustion of being your dancing bear for two hours.

Too young to get bitter over it all
Too old to retaliate like before
Too blessed to be caught ungrateful, I know
So I'll keep dancin' along to the rhythm
This stage is a prison (Too young to get bitter over it all), a beautiful nightmare
A war of attrition (Too old to retaliate like before), I'll take what I'm given
The deepest incisions (Too blessed to be caught ungrateful, I know), I thought I got better
But maybe I didn't

The bridge is where that resignation really hits home. Because honestly, what can he do? He's too polite to tell people to just fuck off and leave him alone. He doesn't want to risk alienating the people who do appreciate the work that he and the band do. And it is work. It's high art. You've got musical theater in front of you for an evening. The stage, the props, the costumes...this is Hamlet or MacBeth with a star-studded cast, iambic pentameter set to a sick beat and he's feeling like he's stuck just being this dancing monkey for the parasocial freaks.

Performance as a coping mechanism. Might shake it out as well, right? Maybe one night it won't feel like a burden, and it will be like it was before.

I know I'm leaning hard into dancing animals in this, but to be frank it's just as exploitative and disgusting to me. Musical performances like this should be appreciated, not serve as masturbation fodder for the masses. Vessel is coping, but he's clearly not coping as well as he thought he was.

(In these days of days) Tell me, did I give you what you came for?
(I wish it all away) Terrified to answer my own front door
(I thought things had changed) Missin' my wings in a realm of angels
(But everything's the same)

And here we have it. The final gut punch. He's standing in what was supposed to be his safe space, his ‘realm of angels,' and you absolute cockwombles have clipped his wings. This wasn't supposed to be a battlefield. This was supposed to be the place where he could breathe, create, and just exist as a fucking musician without you turning it into your personal soap opera or "The Gang Investigates Sleep Token."

He's telling you, albeit politely and very poetically (because he's an artist and let's face it, he's much kinder than some of you deserve) that he doesn't want to hurt your feelings, but you've ruined this for him.