Even in Arcadia

Initial release

The release campaign for the album began in February of 2025, starting with a series of cryptic social media posts on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms.^[8] On 19 February, the band released a TikTok video directing people to a website that teased new music, named showmehowtodanceforever.com.^[9] The video marks the first appearance of the black flamingo, the presumed "Feathered Host", that serves as the ambassador to Arcadia.^[10] In order to access the site's contents, visitors had to arrange letters on the page in the correct sequence.^[11][12] The sequence of letters turned out to be the Shugborough inscription, which is associated with the painting Et in Arcadia ego ("Shepherds of Arcadia"). Additionally, the website's source coding contained the coordinates of the Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England.^[13] Initially, the website allowed users to enter their e-mail address and be randomly assigned to a "house": either 'Arcadia House' or 'Veridian House', later renamed to 'The Feathered Host' and 'House Veridian'.^[13] Eventually, the website was updated so that users could "choose their allegiance" to which house they preferred to be a part of.^[14]

On 27 February, private Instagram accounts for each house were created, to which untitled piano sheet music was posted.^{[14][15][16][17]} Musicians took to social media to render their own interpretatons of the sheet music. It wasn't until the album was released that the tune was revealed as "Even in Arcadia", the title track of the album. (An instrumental version of this appears on the "Emergence" 7-inch vinyl as well as on the Japanese version of the album as a bonus track.) Hidden messages in cyphers and on the sheet music contained references to a blood moon and the numbers 72, 13, and 3, hinting towards an announcement on 13 March, the 72nd day of the year and the date of a blood moon lunar eclipse.^{[citation needed]}

Album, tour, and single announcements

In March, there were a few concert venues in the U.S. that temporarily changed their social media profile pictures to either the House Veridian or The Feathered Host designs, hinting that a tour announcement was imminent.^[18] On 13 March, Sleep Token simultaneously released their first single, "Emergence", announced the album title and release date of 9 May,^[19] and announced their U.S. arena headlining tour with confirmed dates, which was set to commence in September.^[20] The website also launched brand new merchandise to celebrate the album, available to pre-order.^[21]

Within a week, "Emergence" landed on the Billboard Hot 100 after gaining more than 9.9 million plays in the United States.^[1]

The second and third singles, "Caramel" and "Damocles", were also released in April with clues and puzzles for fans to solve. "Caramel" was revealed through a series of posts by American meteorologist Chris Michaels of WRAL-TV, popular for his unique use of rock song lyrics in his weather forecasts.^[22][23] The song debuted at number 34 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band's highest-charting single to date.^[24]

"Damocles" was revealed in a subtler way than "Caramel" was.^[25] On the YouTube countdown to the "Caramel" music video premiere, there was a message in binary code that spelled out "Damocles".^{[26][better source needed]} Additionally, fans noticed randomly capitalized letters in a Billboard interview which also spelled out each letter in "Damocles".^[27][c] The song reached number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100.^[28]

One week before "Damocles" was released, on 18 April, the full album tracklist was announced. The band collaborated with Spotify to create two separate puzzles which were posted to the House Veridian and Feathered Host Instagram accounts. Fans had to unscramble letters and fill in missing ones to figure out each title. House Veridian was assigned tracks 1-5 and The Feathered Host was assigned tracks 6-10, suggesting that those groups of tracks corresponded with each house motto.^[29]

Critical

Even in Arcadia was met with mixed reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received a weighted average score of 64, based on eight reviews, which the website categorised as "generally favorable" reception.^[38]

Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic gave Even in Arcadia a positive review, commending the band for incorporating many different "styles" on the album. He described the track "Caramel" as the album standout, while deeming the album "a streamlined evolution of their established sound".^[40] Writing for Clash, Susan Hansen opined that the album "is an absorbing listen" and that the band explores "unused genre territory" on the record.^[41] Emma Wilkes of Kerrang! wrote an overall positive review, describing the track "Past Self" as "airy synth-and-drum-machine pop" that "gets a little wobbly", but claiming that the album's "minor quibbles are easily dwarfed by the height of its peaks".^[43] Rishi Shah of NME acclaimed the album, opining that it "shatters any pressure of expectation into oblivion, building on the bravery of its predecessor, sonically...".^[36]

Conversely, the album was panned by Eli Enis of Pitchfork, who described it as "smooth, flat, edgeless, and utterly lacking in dynamic payoffs, despite its many attempts to swing from breathy ballads to bludgeoning breakdowns", and that "if metal has to reconfigure itself into Benson Boone with a Spirit Halloween gift card in order to reassert its commercial authority, then maybe it's better off toiling away in basements. At least there it can retain its dignity." ^[6] One staff reviewer from Sputnikmusic was critical of its lyrics and called the band "wholly incompetent songwriters" and that the album itself was "almost offensively boring".^[32]

Ben Beaumont-Thomas, music editor of The Guardian, named Even in Arcadia the worst album of the year, believing that "it sounds like Maroon 5 if they had an iron deficiency".^[46] Similarly, Paste ranked it as the second-worst album of 2025 out of fifteen listed.^[47]

Commercial

Even in Arcadia became a commercial success, debuting atop the UK Albums Chart. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 127,000 album-equivalent units, including 73,500 pure album sales.^[48] The album amassed their first songs to chart on the UK Singles Chart, where the lead single "Emergence" became the band's first top 20 single, peaking at number 17, as well as becoming their first song to enter the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 57. In April, "Caramel" became the band's first single to become a top 10 hit in their home country. In the United States, it became their first top 40 hit, peaking at number 34.