BIG SALES WEEK FOR THE FACELESS, DIR EN GREY, BEHEMOTH
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 4:49pm by Vince Neilstein
All is not lost in the world of metal; in fact, this past week brought some nice surprises, along with the usual mish-mash of shitty radio rock bands. Last week’s sales numbers, with our usual sardonic commentary, after the jump. (Hint: look at the tags below, and click “read more” if any of those bands interest you!).
#6 AC/DC – BLACK ICE
This Week: 105,146
Cume: 1,319,914
Walmart, baby, Walmart. This will be double-platinum by year’s end, and Walmart will have blown through 2/3rds of the non-returnable CDs they purchased. Laugh your ass off, but AC/DC are laughing too… All the way to the bank.
#16 HINDER – TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT
This Week: 36,340
Cume: 117,752
So, Hinder has a new album. Something tells me this is not going to be nearly as successful as the last. Oh darn!
#17 KID ROCK – ROCK N ROLL JESUS
This Week: 34,929
Cume: 2,373,294
58 weeks in, the beast that will never stop selling. That’s a 16% INCREASE from last week. Good God. Errr…. Jesus.
#19 METALLICA – DEATH MAGNETIC
This Week: 32,906
Cume: 1,315,129
Love it or hate it, should also be double-platinum by the time Christmas is done.
#61 SLIPKNOT – ALL HOPE IS GONE
This Week: 11,894
Cume: 541,044
If I were Roadrunner I’d be pretty thrilled with this one. It’s still very early on in the album cycle and already they’re past Gold.
#85 DISTURBED – INDESTRUCTIBLE
This Week: 7,814
Cume: 796,223
This fucking band is, unfortunately, indestructible.
#90 LINKIN PARK – MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
This Week: 7,232
Cume: 2,610,109
See Disturbed, above. Also: 79 weeks on; wtf???!?
#100 SHINEDOWN – SOUND OF MADNESS
This Week: 6,604
Cume: 220,638
Good band, great CD. About to go for the crossover hit. It’ll only go up from here.
#111 BUCKCHERRY – BLACK BUTTERFLY
This Week: 6,157
Cume: 133,036
Huge disappointment after the Cinderella story that was their previous album. Lightning struck twice for Buckcherry, but it won’t strike three times.
#114 DIR EN GREY – UROBOROS
This Week: 6,054 (debut)
That this foreign band who barely even sings in English can sell so many records boggles the mind. But hey, good for them.
#119 THE FACELESS – PLANETARY DUALITY
This Week: 5,631 (debut)
The day that a band that sounds like The Faceless do can sell only 36 fewer copies than radio darlings Staind is a fine day indeed.
#141 FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH – WAY OF THE FIST
This Week: 4,936
Cume: 239,111
A 34% sales jump from last week to this, their 33rd consecutive week on the chart. Impressive. But this band still sucks.
#154 SEETHER – FINDING BEAUTY IN NEGATIVE SPACE
This Week: 4,580
Cume: 589,552
I still don’t care / get this band.
#179 ALL THAT REMAINS – OVERCOME
This Week: 3,884
Cume: 78,317
Good thing we got paid for all those banner ads their record label bought from us. Oh, wait.
Some more numbers from the “Hard Music” charts that didn’t make the cut for the Top 200…
#46 CRADLE OF FILTH – GODSPEED ON THE DEVIL’S THUNDER
This Week: 2,654
Cume: 18,132
This has gotta be a huge disappointment for Roadrunner, and frankly I’m pretty surprised too that this band didn’t sell more records. Maybe most of their fanbase is in Europe?
#59 THE BRONX – THE BRONX (III)
This Week: 1,969 (debut)
Yeah! This band is awesome.
#64 TRIVIUM – SHOGUN
This Week: 1,859
Cume: 47,309
Another surprise… I really thought this record would do better, but it seems like they’ve been quiet in the media since the record was released. But it’s still very early in the album cycle, so there’s plenty of time yet. Big tours should eventually push this record back up the charts.
#78 BEHEMOTH – EZKATON
This Week: 1,649 (debut)
See: The Faceless, above.
#85 UNEARTH – THE MARCH
This Week: 1,599
Cume: 22,666
I’m not sure whether this is seen as a success or failure from Metal Blade’s perspective. On one hand, 22,000 is a pretty respectable number by today’s standards, but on the other hand this band has been around for a while and I’d think the label would expect more. In any case, they put on a friggin’ awesome live show, so who cares?
i love it when you guys post the sales numbers. its always interesting to see how the bands in fairing in the shitty state of the music industry. thanks for dissing hinder, i hate them. and did anyone notice that the album cover from The Faceless looks a like a purple version of All That Remains’ “Overcome” cover?
p.s. – Overcome isn’t THAT bad haha
I agree I never noticed the album cover till now. Overcome really isnt all that bad. i gave it like 10 more listens and its growing. Some good catchy songs. It isnt on my top ten list or anything but still its OK.
I’m really curious as to how well Chinese Democracy will fare.
Also, FUCK YEAH METAL WOOHOO
Funny you should mention that…. what about the cover for Antogonist’s “Exist”… thats a hell of a lot closer…
Cradle of Filth is a really hit and miss band. I opine that their success depends heavily on who is currently in the band. For example, they had a Maidenesque flair to the guitars back before Paul Allender rejoined the band. First album with Allender back and boom, no twin guitars. With the new chick on keyboards, they have less piano in their music (as compared to Nymphetamine), and more orchestra hits. Damn, I’ve written too much about them already.
Cradle’s album hasn’t been promoted the same way their last two were.
Actually Nymphetamine was the only one I’ve ever seen that big of a push for, and Thornography kind of fed off that success and the fact that it was more mainstream sounding.
Godspeed has barely had any advertising. Actually this is he only place I’ve seen any.
And yes, most of their sales are in Europe, once Hot Topic moved to deathcore, the culture that it was breeding that Cradle thrived off of in America kind of started to drift away.
Trivium also has a much larger fanbase in Europe.
And why the fuck does The Faceless basically have the same album cover as Abigail Williams?
Like I thought that was the Abigail Williams cd with slightly different coloring than mine…then it hit me that it was The Faceless.
Lulz @ unearth’s disappointing sales figures.
These guys make me embarrassed to be from MA.
I really like the artwork on that Faceless album.
Unearth is one of the best bands out there and pretty much the only metalcore band that doesn’t embarrass themselves with every note they play on stage. I really would have liked to see higher numbers out of them. Whatever though, they still kick ass.
The Faceless getting numbers like that is an amazing feat for a progressive death metal band. For them to even be anywhere on that chart is a great moment for metal in general. People are finally realizing that it actually takes talent and a moderate amount of intelligence to create some of the thunderous masterpieces The Faceless have done.
Pretty soon Nekrogoblikon will be up there. Not really, but you know.
Come to think of it, why the hell doesn’t anyone on here cover Nekrogoblikon? They kick ass if I do say so myself.
I’m glad to have helped with that Faceless number. I was disappointed that the album sleeve was the same damn art as the booklet. Too much computer generated looking shit IMO. I don’t want to listen to something that looks like it belongs on my Sophomore year roommate’s computer screen at 3 am on a Friday night.
I gotta pick up that faceless album at some point. And to the guy that said that cradle didn’t get any press…???? I saw interviews plus full page ads for multiple months in all three of the metal magazines that I read regularly; Decibel, Metal Hammer, and Terrorizer.
new faceless is devastating.
clean vocals are hot
new Faceless is really awesome. great news.
I couldn’t believe when I heard earlier this week the the deluxe version of the Dir en Grey album had sold out on Hot Topics website. I wish you guys had posted how the show with The Human Abstract/ Dir en Grey went.
Thanks for posting this week’s numbers. Extra points for including bands that are no longer on the Billboard 200. I hope you guys will post these more often.
@jesse – nekrogoblikon do in fact rule.
re: Unearth’s sales. In the Eyes of Fire opened up with 22,000 first-week sales just two years ago, so it’d be considered a massive flop thus far. I think The Oncoming Storm is over 200k copies sold and III has sold over well over 100k. A good band that simply has stagnated like Shadows Fall.
Looks like Trivium will never take off in the States. But they are massive in Europe and Australasia.
I think Trivium’s appeal is waning in the UK, which is one of their biggest markets. Shogun debuted at No.17 in the UK while The Crusade debuted at No.7! Still, they’re performing much better than Unearth or Shadows Fall!
Good to see a technical death metal band (The Faceless) in the top 200. Seems that metal is becoming more popular.