WHITECHAPEL: MORE POPULAR THAN I THOUGHT
Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 12:05pm by Vince Neilstein
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


As always we’ve got this past week’s big rock and metal sellers listed for you after the jump — but the big story is actually that of the Eagles, whose new album Long Road Out of Eden was, until last night, excluded from the charts because it is being sold only at Wal-Mart. Apparently the folks at Billboard and Nielsen decided that a rule change was necessary to restore order to a world that would otherwise have had to deal with everyone’s favorite trainwreck Britney Spears taking the top spot.
Thanks to the MetalSucks reader who tipped us off to the fact that both Exodus and Helloween made this week’s “New Artists” Soundscan chart, for their respective releases The Atrocity Exhibition and Gambling with the Devil. Since both of these bands have been doing their thing for more than two decades now, one has to wonder how the fuck this happened. Is there really no checks and balances system over there to make sure they don’t come across as total ree-ree downey babies?







