Last week’s best selling “Hard Music” album was a Bon Jovi greatest hits package. I make no effort to hide the fact that I enjoy Bon Jovi from time to time, but COME ON FANS OF HEAVY MUSIC WHAT THE FUCK?! Following Bon Jovi, the #2, #3 and #4 charting hard music releases were a 27-week old Linkin Park album, Red State Rock and a GN’R greatist hits album. #5 was Sick Puppies. Sick fucking Puppies! Oy veys mere. Get it together people!

Other than Sick Puppies, the sole new release to chart in its first week out was the new album by Kopek. Who? Exactly. Take solace, fans of heavy music: at least D.R.U.G.S. are selling records.

A day late but never a dollar short, let’s look at last week’s completely irrelevant record sales numbers:

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Like Axl said we’re getting on a plane shortly, so let’s make this shit quick. Some emo haircut band called D.R.U.G.S. (just typing that makes me queasy) sold a lot of records, and Devildriver and Darkest Hour did pretty well too. Numbers and commentary after the jump:

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Once again, the only hard rock and metal albums shifting units* are classics, red state rock, and greatest hits packages. Just look at this screen cap from this week’s Top Hard Music chart:

With all due respect to Avenged Sevenfold, Times of Grace and All That Remains — the only bands with newish albums on that list with some level of modern metal legitimacy (whether you like those bands or hate ‘em) — the above screen cap is proof that album sales are not just tanking, but taking a vertical nosedive straight into oblivion.

In any case, all wasn’t lost last week. Motorhead and Crowbar made decent debuts, while Red continued their dominance. And, uh… Mr. Big.

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I see a pattern developing in 2011; the only albums selling are old ones. It’s quite startling, in fact; it’s already mid-February and the new release machine is kicking into high gear, but the charts are still dominated by best-of compilations and classic albums from the likes of Metallica, Van Halen, Ozzy, Aerosmith (Idol Effect), and Guns N’ Roses and perennially charting butt-rock bands like Godsmack, Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, Kid Rock, Linkin Park, Nickelsuck, etc etc etc. AKA bands that appeal to people mostly over the age of 30. Will 2011 be the year that folks stop purchasing music en masse? It’s too early to tell, but things are not looking good.

In any case, last week saw a variety of solid new releases in the metal world from Full Blown Chaos, Lazarus A.D., Thomas Giles (of BTBAM) and Abysmal Dawn. Not bands you’d expect chart-busting numbers from, but still, heavy hitters in our world. Sadly, only one of those bands was able to crack the Top 100 in the Top Hard Music Charts. We know better than to claim these numbers as a definitive measure of those bands’ popularity, but as long as record labels are the source of funding to launch these bands’ careers — and until there’s a better ranking system that incorporates record sales, merch sales and touring revenue into one chart — sales numbers will matter to some degree.

Let’s look at how last week’s new releases, and a few others, performed on the Soundscan charts.

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Metal Insider tells us that brand new music streaming service MOG went live yesterday morning. MOG promises a deep library at a $5 monthly fee, and boasts a service “better than Rhapsody, iTunes and Pandora…combined.” [Full disclosure: MOG's advertising arm sells some ad space on this site.] With all four major labels signed on (those being Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal), a $5/month unlimited streaming service is a tantalizing proposition indeed. But the million dollar question on our minds (and undoubtedly yours as well) is: do they have metal?

Without having tested the service yet I’m inclined to say that, surprisingly, the answer is actually “yes.” Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Earache, Willowtip and a few other metal labels are distributed digitally through EMI, so those ought to be covered. Warner holds a majority stake in Roadrunner so that oughtta be a no-brainer. Relapse, Metal Blade and Victory releases are distributed by Red, which is owned by Sony. Those are all the labels at the proverbial metal big kids table right there. Obviously there are plenty of other smaller metal labels, but I’m guessing most of them also have major distribution.

This new MOG service is interesting indeed. If anyone here has tested it out, please let us know in the comments how it fares metal-wise. How does it stack up against the much simpler, sleeker Spotify? Watch a brief description of some of the service’s key features in the video below.

-VN