Photo by Ken Settle

Hooray for heavy music!

While many say “rock is dead,” that’s obviously not the case, as the most-listened-to rock artist of 2017 is as heavy as it gets.

The top rock act of 2017, according to the annual year-end report from Nielsen, is the mighty Metallica. Okay, so Metallica is metal, but those are technicalities, right?

The metal gents notched a total of 1,836,000 albums sales, track-equivalent albums and streaming-equivalent albums.

Nielsen’s No. 2 rock artist of 2017 is Imagine Dragons, and No. 3 is the he Beatles. Linkin Park and Twenty One Pilots close out the top five.