During a busy week on the Billboard Hot 100 — which included all 30 songs from Playboi Carti’s Music debuting on the chart, Chappell Roan’s “The Giver” making a top five bow and Doechii’s “Anxiety” becoming the first top 10 hit of her career — a masked hard rock band also hit the Hot 100 for the first time, with a six-minute-plus prog-metal opus. And in the process, the group made both its sprawling fan base and its new major label home ecstatic.
“Emergence,” the new single from enigmatic British metalcore group Sleep Token, debuts at No. 57 on this week’s chart, thanks in part to an enormous first full streaming week (9.9 million official U.S. streams from March 14-20, according to Luminate) following the song’s March 13 release. The song represents something of a mainstream arrival for a band that has existed in the shadows — since its formation nearly a decade ago, the members of Sleep Token have remained anonymous, performing onstage in masks and cloaks — but has become a commercial force in hard rock, with arena headline shows scheduled for the fall and upcoming album Even in Arcadia receiving a pronounced push from RCA Records.
“‘Gratifying’ is the word for it,” John Fleckenstein, COO at RCA Records, tells Billboard of the “Emergence” chart debut. A little more than a year after RCA announced Sleep Token’s signing in February 2024, the band’s first single with the label exploded on streaming services upon its release earlier this month, hitting No. 1 on iTunes and making the top 10 of Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA chart. At the end of its first full week, “Emergence” had also become Sleep Token’s first chart-topper on Hot Hard Rock Songs, and debuted at No. 7 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, a chart where the band had previously peaked at No. 22.
“I think it validates an incredibly passionate fan base that has only gotten bigger over time,” Fleckenstein continues. “For us to help make the connection between the world that they’re creating, the music that they’re making and fans — we’re absolutely thrilled.”
The London-born group is led by the singer-songwriter Vessel, who has helped craft an elaborate backstory for the band’s lyrics since it launched in 2016. In a 2017 discussion with Metal Hammer, the only interview that the band has done to date, Vessel unpacks the lore as it relates to a deity named Sleep, and how they must “project His message.”
Over the course of their first three albums, Sleep Token has expanded its storyline through its lyrics, shows and fan interactions, while also achieving its first chart success in the States: 2023 album Take Me Back to Eden became the band’s first Billboard 200 entry and peaked at No. 16, while the single “The Summoning” climbed to No. 2 on Hot Hard Rock Songs, thanks in part to a TikTok trend.
“This is their music, their art, their world,” Fleckenstein says of the band. “There’s something beautiful here in terms of what they’re creating, and something borderline magical about the community they’ve made.”
Songs like “The Summoning” and Take Me Back to Eden viral hits “Granite” and “Chokehold” synthesize metal, prog and straightforward alt-rock while adding unexpected elements like electro-funk grooves, trap beats and pop harmonies. The mixture is often constructed around Vessel’s burly croon, which is frequently presented at the front of the mix, but is adept at harvesting accessible hooks out of a crashing breakdown when needed.
Like some of Sleep Token’s previous successful tracks, “Emergence” stretches past the six-minute mark, hopscotching between parted-clouds harmonies, thundering guitars and skittering electronics while deploying post-apocalyptic lyrics (“I’ve got solar flares for your dead gods, space dust for your fuel rods/ Dark days for your solstice, dancing through the depths of/ Hellfire, on the winds that started from within/ My blood beats so alive, might tear right through my skin”) that beg for a close read by those following the lore. Yet the key difference between “Emergence” and the band’s previous singles lies within the song’s refrain — “Go ahead and wrap your arms around me” — tuned-down and repeated multiple times, and catchy enough to beguile casual listeners.
Sleep Token is one of several groups turning modern metalcore more mainstream — bands like Bad Omens and Spiritbox have grown considerably in stature in recent years, while veterans like Bring Me the Horizon and Ghost continue to scoop up casual listeners. But “Emergence” is the type of song that could separate the band from their contemporaries, ahead of a major-label debut.
“I do actually think there’s been a bit of a shift in the market, where there seems to be a greater pull towards [live] instrumentation,” says Fleckenstein of the recent rock surge. With Sleep Token, he says, “One would think that this would be a style of consumption from a really passionate fan base that shows up on day one, and then everything starts to fall off. We’re not seeing that here at all — we’re actually seeing this song get stronger. This is transcending what most people want to do, which is say, ‘Oh, this is metal,’ or ‘This is country,’ or ‘This is pop’ — this is just being seen as popular music right now, and people are liking it for what it is.
“These are not numbers that we see out of a metal genre, or even a rock genre, today,” Fleckenstein continues. “These are numbers are that competitive across anybody in the marketplace.”
RCA will release Even in Arcadia on May 9, and Sleep Token will hit the road on a 17-date, AEG Presents-promoted tour on Sept. 16, with a stop at the Louder Than Life festival on Sept. 19. Fleckenstein says that RCA will do what it can to make sure as many fans as possible dive into the world that the band has created, but can’t spoil any details of the rollout over the next six weeks.
“That’s part of the journey here,” he says. “What they’re creating is intensely personal for a fan, because figuring out what happens next and trying to understand is part of appreciating the music.” Fleckenstein has advice for curious newcomers, too: “Dive into what the fans are talking about!” he says. “You’ll get a good picture.”
