With the holidays right around the corner — and all the best of, greatest hits and holiday comps that come therewith — this past Tuesday was the last big date for new album releases in 2010, though there are still a few stragglers coming down the pipe. The world of hard rock and metal made a big showing last week, with new releases from Underoath, Dio, Cradle of Filth, Oceano, Gwar, Helloween, Volbeat and a smattering of others making the Soundscan charts. Rankings, sales figures and commentary after the jump.

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Them Crooked Vultures debuted in the Top 20… how ’bout that. Not surprising given the cast of characters, I suppose. MetalSucks guest blogger Devin mothafuckin’ Townsend debuted in the Top 200, while a few other metal releases maintained. It’s all holiday shlock and best-of compilations from hereon out.

[UPDATE: Devin will be calling in to the Metal Injection Livecast tonight at 8pm EST! Make sure you tune in; get details here.]

Soundscan shite after the jump…

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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