about your lyric analysis one thing is that in euclid I never gathered that vessel has wings I always thought he was talking to someone else who had them that he cared about. And second caramel 'missing my wings in a realm of angels' makes sense bc look to windward has the verse about him being the demon of sodom aka lucifer the angel who fell and lost his wings. idk if all this fits your analysis but maybe it helps?
Hi Anon! I'm sorry, that was supposed to be a short answer, but halfway replying to you, my inner pandora box opened and uh. Yeah.
Short version is: now that you say it, before eia i also never considered vessel to be the one with wings. Maybe i've got a lose thought once or twice about him being someone who lost his wings (and therefore protecting the other person who still has them), but not in a demon/fallen angel context, tbh (i will explain why later)
(Also bc creatures with ripped wings give so much potential for stories about loss)
Now for the long answer! (I am sorry in advance.)
Usual vessels-as-characters-only disclaimer
Also i-know-my-bible-but-not-that-well and i-know-it-from-christian-perspective-only disclaimers
Caramel confirms (for the lack of a better word) that vessel did have wings.
(A gremlin of a thought appeared: what if he never had wings, but ended up in the realm of angels somehow anyway and now feels out of place, because he is different, he doesn't have wings, like everyone else here? Oh, that is an entire new interpretation that i do not need in this post, brain, pls let me focus on the topic at hand)
While caramel mentions a realm of angels, eia(song) says there's nothing above. It's all loose interpretations to me - caramel's metaphorical paradise where he feels out of place and eia referencing perhaps to losing the hope gained previously in euclid - heaven being a metaphor for hope. The grass is always greener on the other side and so on.
(Hm. Maybe that's why we have mentions of two different gardens that are utopian visions of paradise in the discography 🤔 although i do not necessarily see eden=heaven, it's just another loose thought, i need to get tested for adhd for real)
So. I do think the caramel's realm of angels and eia's "above" are just different places, depending on a metaphor he wanted to convey at the time. But if we try to put it in sleep token "lore", then let's say that sure, maybe there's no heaven, but it's not like everyone died when heaven disappeared/got destroyed/got brought down by the ancient bygone. The angels had to go somewhere. A local pub, maybe. Computer cables. All the "biblical accurate [insert thing]" memes make sense now LMAO (idk where i would put vessel among those angels, but it is just a funny thought - heaven is gone, angels are on earth now, please do not consider this a part of the lore i'm just derailing here again)
However, i have to disagree a little on the lucifer part with you, Anon. I get where your thought is coming from, but it actually gave me food for thought about angels, wings, demons and the whole heavenly business and i'll try to explain it the best i can.
I interpret the "demon of sodom" line with vessel stating he's a lustful, hedonistic being (fork found in kitchen /lh). Not necessarily lucifer, that boy fell long before sodom and gomorrah.
Funny enough, the bible doesn't mention what sins the citizens of both cities committed, just that they were wicked and needed to be punished. But later on it turned into a synonym of lust and, unfortunately, homosexuality (which is not what i am going to discuss here. It is however linked closely to this biblical story's widespread interpretation, so i'm mentioning it here).
Btw, you know who god sent to destroy those cities? Two angels! That the citizens wanted to fuck. Which maybe explains why people went sodom&gomorrah = lust later on, idk.
Either way! We all know vessel is a very sexual being, so that's why my immediate connection with the demon of sodom lyrics was lust.
Now, back to lucy and his followers falling from the heavens - while i wouldn't link the demon of sodom line with lucifer personally, i do see some similarities between him rebelling against god and whatever vessel and sleep have going on in their relationship by eia(album). Not 100% the same, but you know, some similarities are there. The other thing that doesn't let me connect those dots completely is the "cause I have paid my penance kindly well in time for judgement day" line in eia. If there is one creature that won't get any redemption during the judgement day, it's lucifer.
And now, the wings talk!! Fun fact: angels in the bible are rarely described as winged beings. The ones visiting people certaily don't have wings. They are either standing in a circle of fire (badass) or are so radiant you just know that ain't a human tresspasser in your house. Only the cherubim and seraphim are described as winged beings, but they're not dealing with humans at all (i think? Don't quote me on that, though). Angels don't need wings to fly. The depictions with wings began to appear in art a few centuries later and are probably taken from assyrian depictions of winged deities anyways, sprinkled with greek mythology elements. Tbh i think the angels-as-humans-with-wings thing started in art only to show they're otherwordly beings, to better tell them apart from actual humans. Don't quote me on that either.
So, technically, lucifer and his merry band of rebels didn't have wings in the first place. But we still depict demons with wings, just "uglier" than fethered angel wings.
Now i have a visceral flashback to the painting where fallen angels were repulsive beings with butterfly wings - a reminder of their former beauty and glory. I need to sit down. (It's The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Breugel the Elder btw.)
Where was i. Ah, yes. This is why i don't think of winged individuals as angels/demons only, cause i always have "angels have no wings" trivia in the back of my head. However!! Angels+wings is rooted deep in art and now popular culture, so it's hard not to think of angels/demons when talking about humanoid creatures with wings. (Hell, i drew some angels recently and they did have wings to indicate i mean them to be angels.) It's so inseparably connected with angels, that even not all christians know that the Matthew the Evangelist's tetramorph is not an angel, but a winged man.
In the context of sleep token's discography, i tend to see the winged individuals just as free and happy beings, when angels are not mentioned literally. Humans(?) not weighted down by gravity. By their sins, problems, traumas. And i know it's just me being too particular about the details, but as i said! The pandora box of my mind opened and this happened <3
Talking about the trilogy and how "Sundowning" didn't stop after the first album
TW: alzheimers, death, grief
It’s no news the albums can be seen as a trilogy, we all know about TNDNBTG and Euclid, there has got to be some kind of connection.
Now if we look at the title of album nr.1 “Sundowning” we could look into how this album might describe the journey of someone with Alzheimer’s disease. More specifically I believe the album lets us have a look into the world of someone whose loved one is slowly becoming more and more sick.
“And you remember everything until the sun recedes once again” can be taken very literally.
Also if we think of Blood Sport, it could definitely imply the speaker trying to hold on to their loved one but failing to do so (“I can’t win”).
Now, I don’t necessarily believe the journey stops there.
Once again taking album names very literally, “This Place Will Become Your Tomb” might represent the final stages of Alzheimers and eventually the death of the person in question.
I won’t go into detail on every song because we’d be here for a while then but just to give a few examples: Fall For Me might describe a stage where the loved one no longer recognises the speaker as a close relative and instead assume they are trying to harm them, so the speaker is just desperately trying to explain how they are still full of the love the loved one wants.
Finally Missing Limbs shows the speaker indulging into the world of their loved one after they have passed. Now that they don’t have to actively react to actions of their loved one anymore, they have time to reflect and understand how horrible the last time must have been for them.
Lastly we have Take Me Back To Eden as a representation of the speaker slowly getting back to their life as it used to be. “Eden” can here be seen as the state where the speaker wasn’t yet aware of diseases like Alzheimers ruining one’s life, when they still managed to live carelessly. With Euclid lyrically circling back to TNDNBTG we have a final goodbye to their loved one before finally letting go.
This is very short now, let me know if you want a detailed explanation for each album, I might consider posting this in three parts then :)
