I'm not a metalhead but they firmly sound like a trap/metal fusion band to me.
They suck at being a fusion band though, because they do it in a way where their songs just swap between them in the middle instead of actually fusing the genres.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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Unpopular Opinion
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Arguing about what is and isn't a genre is a bit pointless at the end of the day. Music is an evolving art form and bands can borrow from this that or the other genres to create an original sound.
This band clearly has some aspects of their sound that is idiomatic of metal, as well as a bunch of stuff that doesn't sound like metal.
It's fair of someone to call them a metal band if that's what they hear and connect to in the music.
Cool. So since genres are meaningless I can go write a country and western album tomorrow and if a handful of the songs have a drumbeat that sounds vaguely hip hop-ish I can market it as gangsta rap then... If anyone says "but Mr Gumb you're a white guy playing country music in your bedroom, that's not very gangsta" I can shriek at them about gatekeeping or condescendingly shame them for even attempting to assign a genre to what I do!
Wow, the future is amazing!!!
My friend, you're describing Post Malone.
But more to the point, genres are in the ear of the beholder. Anyone can have a personal opinion about what type of music is X or isn't X, but that doesn't get to override another person saying they think X is Y. Music is inherently subjective, genres are fluid and fundamentally just labels we use to say "this sound reminds me of that sound". You can think a person or group is ridiculous but there is no objective truths here, it's truly just your opinion versus their opinions it's an inherently unwinable discussion for anyone.
Respectfully, this is a angsty teenage type of wasted energy. Purity testing art is just a no win situation, worry less about the words others use to describe art and focus more on the fact that you're all enjoying different parts of the same artist.
Ah, I see you've chosen the "condescendingly shame people for acknowledging genres even exist" route. Well played 👍
That is the wrong genre classification for my post. I suppose I have no choice but make my own thread complaining how other opinions aren't as nuanced as my own opinion of my opinion.
Depending on which albums you listened, Take me Back to Eden and Even in Arcadia have a lot more metal to them than their first two. I think Vore and Infinite Baths have to be two of their hardest off the top of my head. They also often times have heavy breakdowns in their songs taking something more mellow to being more metal.
I don't know where I'd truly classify them. You have a song like Vore and then DYWTYLM on the same album and they are very different. I think overall if I was going in not knowing them, I'd have gone with some sub genre of hard rock. Really I'm not a purist or anything like that and couldn't tell you one sub genre from the next, so to me it's rock music, which also encompasses metal.
But I would recommend listening to their latest two albums if you listened to This Place Will Become Your Tomb and Sundowning. I personally think they're more enjoyable because they're a bit harder and that's part of why they've exploded over the last few years.
The two I listened to were Sundowning and Even in Arcadia.
Saying something is or isn't in a genre when a lot of people are on both sides is gatekeeping, and ultimately is only a waste of energy for the gatekeeper.
See: all electronic music being techno in the 00s and then EDM in the 10s—you can get pissed off that people are calling something by the wrong name, but they're all still gonna do it.
When there are lots of people on both sides, that's called an opinion, not gatekeeping, ffs. Gatekeeping is when most agree something fits a loose definition but not some unreasonable personal requirement.
The only part that irritates me is that I can't understand why people keep doing it. Even though it's not my favorite music they are a very talented band they don't need to glom on to a genre to be popular I don't understand why anyone even wants them to be a "metal" band
After having listened to a decent amount of their music I feel like if there were ZERO heavy parts it wouldn't make a difference since that's like maybe 20% of what they do
It makes me head hurt 😢
I think part of it is that metal can be very genre-fluid compared to other styles of music, so when people hear the metal parts they're quick to accept it as that. One of the first things new metal listeners learn is that there are a thousand subgenres.
I kind of loosely place them in the metal category in my mind. Even though they're really a lot more like Bon Iver with the occasional metal passage.
I love all kinds of avant garde and cross over and post-metal stuff that pushes the genre to its breaking point, Sleep Token seems more like they never intended to play any heavy music in the first place though. I'm not sure why they even bother with the heavy parts of the songs since it seems so jarringly out of place with the majority of what's on their albums
Yeah I kind of agree. Their mellow side certainly seems to outweigh the metal parts from what I've listened to. I guess the artist felt that was the best way to express what they wanted to express, even if you and I don't really "get" that part of their vision.
I have to upvote this as unpopular because there’s not enough people who even know of Sleep Token to have an opinion.
Yup. I feel like those who listen to metal forget it really isn't that popular of a genre, comparatively. According to YT, more people know of Red Letter Media, a group of geriatric, alcoholic hacks, than Sleep Token!
Now, I listened to a couple of songs and the best way I could describe it, in my ignorance of the group and genre in general, is 'heavier' electronic 30 Seconds to Mars with a slower tempo (poppy rave metal, maybe?). I think I also heard a sax outro, which surprised me! It does seem hard to define (and the fact that I kind of enjoyed it probably means OP might be right, lol), but again, I'm more of an acid jazz and romantic ballad kinda guy. 😅
I wouldn’t say people don’t know who they are. They headlined the main stage on Saturday at Download festival this year.
I would say people don’t know who they are. Its members remain anonymous by wearing masks.
Ha, got me there!
What is download festival?
UK rock/metal festival. The other two headliners were Korn and Green Day, for comparison.
“My band is too cool for you to have heard of them” he says about a band that literally sells out arenas and tops streaming charts
the real unpopular opinion is always in the comments
Wtf are you talking about? They sell out huge arenas lol regardless of my own opinion of them they are a massively popular band
What percent of 8 billion people have to know about something for it to be counted as popular?
You appear to be the expert about who is or isn't popular based solely on your own opinion so you tell me buddy
Well, I wouldn’t call them pop music
I would.
yes, but your opinion is unpopular
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Maybe I'm stupid, but they sound like metal to me. I mean don't get .e wrong, very with much pop appeal and in their own niche with rnb, dnb, soul and funk influence but I have a real hard time calling them anything else.
I suppose it's subjective I just don't see it. All of their songs that I've heard were like 90% indie pop/dance/electronica and like 10% sort of metal-ish if you squint at it guitars.
That's so interesting because for me it's the opposite. I've been listening to lots of indie (indie rock, electronic indie), EDM (melodub, dnb, future garage, electro house, ...) and metal (very mainstream and new school metalcore, e.g. new architects, some bmth, novelists, senna, underoath, imminence, spiritbox, ...).
They are bang on in there. Definitely very mainstream produced, the singing is almost theatrical with pop performance feats, but then again sometimes heavy screams. The rifds are heavy and low, although very interspersed with samples, ethnic instruments and elements, ...
What I'm trying to say is, you will find lots of random things in their arrangement, but everything that generally makes metal is in there. And because that is the most defining feature, there is no way for me to put this up in softer genres. Genres, where I would expect artists like Tennyson, Young the Giant, Paper Idol, Robotaki, AJR, Dreamers, or the xx. These are just two different worlds for me, and the metal core artists, although of course very distinct just fit better with Sleep Token.
The only other genre I could see is alternative but for me the sound still differs too much. And because people need to genres to understand how to categorize artists, I feel like putting them in the general category of metal is warranted.
Sry I'm not trying to win an argument, just expanding on where I'm coming from. Please don't take this the wrong way, I can definitely see why they stick out a lot when you put them in metal, and that's something that does make sense to me.
Hey no judgment here. I don't hate Sleep Token per se, to me the bulk of what they do just doesn't sound like "metal". They're good musicians and once I stopped listening to them expecting to hear metal I actually did enjoy some of the piano and vocals stuff and some of the more atmospheric tracks. One of the most recent albums I got really excited about was a black metal/flamenco crossover band from Chile that I'm sure most of the metal heads I know will instantly despise lol