Hard Rock is Hot Again: Are 'Elder Emo' Fans Converting the Next Generation?

Sleep Token follows Ghost in scoring its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. What does it mean?

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Andy Ford

We’re not even halfway through 2025, and already two masked hard-rock bands have hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with their new albums — and they’ve done so less than a month apart.

Two weeks ago (on the May 3-dated charts), Ghost scored its first-ever Billboard 200 leader with Skeletá. And now, Sleep Token earns its own No. 1 album for the first time with Even In Arcadia. It marks the first time since 2019 that two hard rock albums have ruled the chart in the same calendar year. That year, Slipknot’s We Are Not Your Kind and Tool’s Fear Inoculum both topped the chart, earning both acts their third No. 1s. But what makes 2025’s wins feel particularly notable is that both Ghost and Sleep Token are first-time chart-toppers — a potential passing-of-the-torch among hard rock’s biggest names. As we wrote when Ghost debuted, it had been 10 years since a hard rock act scored its first No. 1 album (when Breaking Benjamin topped the ranking in 2015 with Dark Before Dawn).

Even In Arcadia leads the latest Billboard 200 (dated May 24) with 127,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in its first week, according to Luminate. Of those units, 73,500 came from traditional album sales, including 47,000 in vinyl alone.

It’s the 20th hard rock album to top the Billboard 200 since 2010. Here’s the full list:

Hard Rock Album to Top the Billboard 200 Since 2010
Artist, Title, Peak Date

Godsmack, The Oracle, 5/22/2010
Avenged Sevenfold, Nightmare, 8/14/2010
Disturbed, Asylum, 9/10/2015
Linkin Park, A Thousand Suns, 10/2/2010
Foo Fighters, Wasting Light, 4/30/2011
Evanescence, Evanescence, 10/29/2011
Linkin Park, Living Things, 7/14/2012
Queens of the Stone Age, …Like Clockwork, 6/22/2013
Black Sabbath, 13, 6/29/2013
Avenged Sevenfold, Hail to the King, 9/14/2013
Slipknot, .5: The Gray Chapter, 11/8/2014
Breaking Benjamin, Dark Before Dawn, 7/11/2015
Disturbed, Immortalized, 9/12/2015
Metallica, Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, 12/10/2016
Foo Fighters, Concrete and Gold, 10/7/2017
Slipknot, We Are Not Your Kind, 8/24/2019
Tool, Fear Inoculum, 9/14/2019
AC/DC, Power Up, 11/28/2020
Ghost, Skeletá, 5/10/2025
Sleep Token, Even In Arcadia, 5/24/2025

Sleep Token’s chart-topping album is a landmark moment for the masked and cloaked British band, whose members have all remained anonymous, identified only by Roman numerals. Their mystique and lore has fueled a fervent fan base. After releasing music on the indie label Spinefarm, the band signed with RCA Records in early 2024.

“It’s a marketer’s dream project,” Aaron Stern, RCA’s vp of marketing, told Billboard in a recent interview.

“Before we could approach the rollout plans for Even In Arcadia, it was critical to me that everyone who would be tied to the project deeply understood and respected the profound and expansive world the band created to surround its artistry long before this record,” he said. “Sleep Token set a best-in-class standard for how an artist can cultivate an audience of fans that sincerely immerse themselves in the music and surrounding visual identity.”

Stern credits Sleep Token’s breakout moment to both the cyclical resurgence of rock and a desire for authenticity among fans. “The continuous growth of streaming, as well as social media trending topics like the elder-emo subculture over the past few years, have contributed to exposing younger generations to rock music, sparking new interest in the genre,” he added.

Sleep Token also charts all 10 songs from the album on the Billboard Hot 100 — a remarkable feat considering they reached the chart for the first time in March with “Emergence.” Here’s the full breakdown of their songs on the latest chart:

No. 56, “Dangerous” (debut)
No. 57, “Caramel” (re-entry; peaked at No. 34)
No. 58, “Emergence” (re-entry; peaked at No. 57)
No. 61, “Even In Arcadia” (debut)
No. 66, “Look to Windward” (debut)
No. 70, “Past Self” (debut)
No. 72, “Damocles” (re-entry; peaked at No. 47)
No. 75, “Gethsemane” (debut)
No. 77, “Provider” (debut)
No. 100, “Infinite Baths” (debut)

They also make history on Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart by blanketing the top eight positions. They join Linkin Park (who claimed the whole top 10) as the only artists to hold the entire top eight simultaneously, dating to the chart’s launch in 2020.

For more on the Billboard charts, click here. Which rock artist do you think will be next to earn a No. 1 album? Let us know in the comments.

—Xander Zellner