Love Or Loathe Them, Sleep Token Gave Metal It's Biggest Win Since 2019

Forbes

26-05-2025

LEEDS, ENGLAND - AUGUST 27: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Sleep Token performs on Day 3 of Leeds Festival ... More 2023 at Bramham Park on August 27, 2023 in Leeds, England. (Photo by Katja Ogrin/Redferns)
Between Ghost's 2025 LP Skeletá and now Sleep Token's Even In Arcadia, metal music has now seen two No.1 charting albums within the span of a month – a feat not seen in over six years for the genre. Slipknot and TOOL's 2019 LPs, both of which released in the month of August, were the last two metal albums to chart at No.1 within the same month time span. With Ghost and Sleep Token achieving their first No.1 charting albums last month, there's a lot to be said about what this implicates for metal and hard-rock music in the mainstream.
It bears comparing 2019's back-to-back No.1 metal albums to 2025's, as neither Sleep Token nor Ghost had seen this kind of charting success before, whereas Slipknot and TOOL both had – Slipknot and TOOL's 2019 album sales pale in comparison to their previous No.1 charting records. Furthermore, Ghost isn't exactly new to the scene but they're an arena touring act that's been climbing the charts over the last couple releases, so their sixth studio LP Skeletá was expected to at least make it close to No.1 in the U.S.
Sleep Token, however, who only released their first LP in 2019, has seen quite the jump in their fanbase over the last two years – their previous 2023 LP Take Me Back To Eden landed at No. 16 on the U.S. Top 200 albums charts. Since then not only has Sleep Token earned their first No.1 charting album with just their fourth studio album Even In Arcadia, but they've quickly become metal's next arena and festival headliner.
What's so striking about Sleep Token's soaring success is the possibilities it could mean for the future of metal, specifically its new and rising acts. For the last two decades, bands in the scene have had to earn their stripes and go above and beyond in their careers to build their fanbase and hopefully become an arena or festival headliner. Acts from the 2000s-2010s like Gojira, Trivium, Deftones and are just now getting to tour across the world as arena headliners, only 20 plus years later.
While this aspect hasn't exactly changed in this decade, the means and methods of cultivating a fanbase has changed, specifically with how music consumers engage with music via social media. So many metal and hard-rock artists like Sleep Token and Ghost, have seen such viral success as a result of platforms like Tiktok and Instagram reels. Even Deftones' recent resurgence is a result of Gen-Z's fascination with the 90's-early 2000s nu metal era. However, in the case of Sleep Token, the band brilliantly utilizes their own mystique and ambiguous aura in a way that encourages their own fanbase to consistently engage with them on social media.
Sleep Token's unprecedented success this year has been a result of their effective methods in attracting listeners into their fanbase via social media, as well doubling down on their enigma like-persona. Regardless of whether or not you find their music to be great or lackluster, there's a lot that other bands could take away from Sleep Token's success and more importantly how they cleverly engage with their fanbase.