MetalSucks

Says Metal Insider’s Bram Teitelman in his weekly Soundscan roundup, “There are only a few things that are certain: death, taxes, and a TSO album every other Christmas or so.” And so, as the holiday season fast approaches, last week saw strong sales from TSO’s latest amongst a bunch of greatest hits collections,  boxsets and various other re-packagings… de rigeur for this time of year.

Not a lot of metal made this week’s charts, but the latest releases from Alice in Chains, Slayer, Dethklok and others continued to sell well. Don’t expect much in the way of big metal releases between now and the end of year (except, of course, for The Binary Code’s Suspension of Disbelief which is going to obliterate every sales record in the history of EVER), so this column may go dormant for a little while.

Check out last week’s complete sales run-down at Metal Insider.

-VN

Not that we had any doubt Baroness’ Blue Record would have a strong debut, but it’s always nice to see the proof. And Skeletonwitch’s ripping new record Breathing the Fire had a great debut too; I’m elated to see the band sell as many records first week as they did. Elsewhere it was the usual radio rock / alt-metal suspects dominating the charts. Click through to see chart positions and sales figures.

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Five heavy hitting heavy hitters — Alice in Chains, Hatebreed, Austrian Death Machine, Steel Panther and Dethklok — all released new records last week. Solid 2nd and 3rd week performances from Three Days Grace, Muse, Megadeth, Five Finger Death Punch and others made it an all-around big week for metal. Let’s see how everyone fared after the jump.

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Last Tuesday was a huuuuge week for new metal releases. Megadeth, Black Dahlia Murder, Shadows Fall, Living Colour, Dying Fetus, Porcupine Tree, Every Time I Die, Thrice and Ace Frehley all released new albums, and all charted in the Top 200! After the jump, let’s look at where they all ended up.

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Our bro-bros at Metal Insider have compiled some Soundscan and radio rankings from the world of metal last week for your perusal. The highlights:

Insane Clown Posse, Bang! Pow! Boom! (Psychopathic) #4, 50,000 sold
If the title of your new album closely resembles a song by the Black Eyed Peas, you might be a wigger.

Chevelle, Sci-Fi Crimes (Epic) #6,  45,500 sold
What Hollywood Undead is to ICP, Chevelle was to Tool. At least initially.

In slightly more encouraging news:

Pantera, Vulgar Display of Power (Atlantic Group) 780 sold
This is all digital sales – Amazon had a one-day sale of the album for $3.99. Not too shabby.

Get the full skinny on the rest of the charts over at Metal Insider.

-VN

Behemoth vs. Winds of Plague; Poland vs. America; Corpsepaint vs. wigger hats; ugly men vs. hot chick; real metal vs. deathcore; substance vs. gimmick. Who won????

The answer, as well as more of this past week’s metal Soundscan chart positions and sales figures, after the jump.

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Last week was somewhat of a slow one for metal record sales. There weren’t a whole lot of new releases, but a few records that have been out for a while hung onto their spots in the Top 200 and Hank III’s Assjack project had a solid debut. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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Last week was a ginormous week for new metal releases, and with new ones from Killswitch and Suicide Silence this week promises to be the same. Topping last week’s crop was Dream Theater’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings which debuted at #6 on the Soundscan Charts. Wait a minute… Dream Theater debuted at #6?? Holy fuckity-fuck. Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Goatwhore also had strong debuts. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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This week in Soundscan, supergroup Chickenfoot shifted a ridiculous number of records. I’m baffled too. Elsewhere, Iron Maiden had a solid debut and bands like Nickelback, Hollywood Undead, Shinedown, Slipknot, and Metallica continued on with business as usual.

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The infamous Now That’s What They Call Music comp, now it’s thirtieth iteration (!), will never stop selling. Nor will Hannah Montana. Given, it’s tough for any true metal band to crack the Billboard 200, but Mastodon did just once again that by notching a #11 debut with Crack the Skye, beat out metal-wise only by Papa Roach (ugh). Elsewhere, we got some surprises from Chris Cornell, Twiztid (!?) and others. Sales figures for those and other notable hard rock and metal releases after the jump.

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Lamb of God’s Wrath dropped 67% to #12, moving a still very respectable 22,146 units. They should cross the 100,000 mark next week. God Forbid’s Earthsblood dropped 54%, just barely out of the Top 200, but still shifted 2,493 units (check last week’s debut numbers for both releases here). Cannibal Corpse moved 1,389 copies of Evisceration Plague in their 5th week on the chart, and will cross 20,000 cume next week. Score! Elsewhere, acts like Nickelback, Hollywood Undead and Kid Rock shifted way too many albums, and that’s really all you need to know.

By the way people, these Soundscan numbers do include both physical and digital albums.

-VN

Lamb of God and God Forbid dominated the metal charts in their Soundscan debut weeks. A quick look at the numbers of those and other notable releases after the jump with our own witty commentary, natch.

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The sales of recorded music are in as bleak a state as ever, and this week’s Soundscan charts paint the picture. The screenshot at left is from the Top 25 of this week’s charts; the column in the middle is the percentage each album dropped from last week to this week. Excepting the Total Club Hits compilation which debuted at #16 (the “999%” entry you see), you have to go all the way down to #52 to find an album that actually increased sales from week to week.

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It’s the holiday season so there isn’t much to report in the way of new releases, with labels instead opting to cash in on best-of collections, holiday-themed albums and catalog albums (industry speak for albums that aren’t the band’s most recent release). That said, there’s a really interesting subplot happening on the Soundscan Charts this week.

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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!).

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Lord knows we are completely sick of talking about Metallica here at the MS Mansion despite the fact that a Metallica post is automatically good for 50-100 comments and we love watching you all duke it out. But damn, the fact that Metallica’s Death Magnetic sits atop the Soundscan charts for the 3rd week in a row, having moved over 130,000 units this week and 500,000 units in its abridged first week (due to a Friday release date), is certainly worth breaking our self-imposed Metallica hiatus for. In other weeks this year 131,000 wouldn’t be enough to tally a #1, but that’s part of the game; this week’s #2 Demi Lovato (who???) shifted only 88,000 copies. And any way you slice it, 131,000 is a damn respectable number.

Apparently Metallica is still relevant. And apparently nearly 1 million people think Death Magnetic is good enough to pay for it. Shitty mixing job be damned.

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So remember two hours ago when we reported that Slipknot had missed the #1 Soundscan spot by a mere 13 albums to The Game? Apparently Roadrunner Records pulled an Al Gore and asked for a recount. Yup, really. And unlike the ill-fated and unfortunate display of electioneering and corruption of the year 2000, the results have been reversed. After much media hullaballoo and meticulous checking of hanging chads, Slipknot is officially #1, selling 239,516 units to The Game’s 238,382. Score one for metal!

-VN

It seemed as if Slipknot was destined for their first-ever #1 album on the U.S. Soundscan charts. Not so, thanks to hip-hop artist The Game, whose new release LAX sold 238,285 copies, a whopping 13 more than the 238,272 units shifted of Slipknot’s All Hope is Gone — still an extremely respectable and awesome number. And yes, these numbers include full albums purchased digitally.

It was a big week for Roadrunner all around; Dragonforce’s Ultra Beatdown debuted at #19 with 23,977 copies sold. We hope the RR braintrust throw a kegger for all the fine folks working over there; and we hope we’re invited!

Elsewhere, radio mainstays Kid Rock, Staind and Disturbed unsurprisingly continued to sell a lot of records in Middle America.

-VN

It was a good week for metal last week — we’ll politely ignore the fact that Kid Rock’s Rock N’ Roll Jesus shifted an astounding 100,000 copies in its 46th week on the charts (!) to move up to #2 — and that Staind’s The Illusion of Progress netted a #3 debut by the band’s constant refusal to actually progress at all. Instead, how about some big first weeks for bands we actually care about?

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When I glanced at this week’s Soundscan charts, one thing jumped out at me: Whitechapel’s debut This Is Exile debuted at #117, tied with the new Maroon 5 live album (!), scanning 5,907 units.

Now, call me crazy, but this just makes no sense to me; a relatively unknown band moving such a respectable number of units seems a tad fishy to me. In fact, when I searched Google Images with “whitechapel this is exile” to find the album cover to post above, said cover was the SEVENTH result on the page. Uhhh… what??

So… What exactly is the story here? New MS writer Sammy O’Hagar gave the record a decent review — personally I haven’t listened to it — but certainly didn’t seem to think it was that special. Are Whitechapel getting a big push on MTV2? Radio? Are their live shows completely captivating, setting moshpits across the nation on fire? Are the first week numbers inflated due to a special pre-order bundle or inclusion in another package?

Beats me. Maybe I oughtta go listen to this record to see what the hype is about.

-VN