Two days late but not two dollars short, I figure ya’ll might like to know how all the albums that came out last Tuesday (April 12th) fared sales-wise, even though I think we can all agree that album sales aren’t the be-all-end-all measure of a band’s success. So without further ado, here’s how the new Between the Buried and Me, Foo Fighters and Red Fang albums sold last week.

Also, Dave Grohl is a very rich man; in addition to the ginormous debut of his new Foo Fighters album, seemingly every Foo catalog album made a return back onto the charts this past week.

Right, the numbers:

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If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.

No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).

Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.

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Let’s just pretend that I wrote a clever intro and move directly to the matter at hand, shall we?

So. Despite the order of the band in my headline I am actually going to start with this video Gary Suarez sent us, for “Call to the Warrior” by the band Affiance. Why? Because it’s actually NOT terrible! I mean, clearly some thought went into it, and it’s well-made. It’s actually good enough that it makes me wish I liked the song more. I guess as far as twenty-fifth generation screamo/metalcore acts go, Affiance isn’t bad, but they’re not playing anything you haven’t heard before. I do kinda wonder if the vocalist can really hit those notes or not… if anyone checks out this band live, let me know.

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Last week we offered ya’ll the chance to win a copy of Return to Earth’s Automata and a copy of Hammers of Misfortune’s Church of Broken Glass for the piddly price of using your noggin to come up with a funny caption to the photo at right. This week we tell you that the winner is:

• Tim: “Dimmu Brogir.”

We’ve got two signed copies of Within Temptation’s new one The Unforgiving to dole out this week courtesy of your pals at Roadrunner Record. Our photo comes from longtime reader Jake Haras. The girl in question reminds me a whole lot of a girl I once knew… and honestly, it’s kind of creeping me out. Get to doing your thing: leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below. Remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect).

In case you’ve somehow never seen it before, watch this old PSA from the 70s:

Now watch the new Within Temptation video. It’s probably best to put your computer on mute first, though, because – and I say this as someone who is a sucker for a good power ballad – the song is aural diarrhea.

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Congrats to Gary Carlson, Christine Paustian, Reece Eargle and Ilona Adamiec. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Temnozor, and they each win an autographed copy of the CD booklet for Opeth’s Watershed. That’s gotta be one of the coolest prizes we’ve ever given away here at MetalSucks, and I hope they all relish it!

This week the party animals at Roadrunner Records have graced us with two, count ‘em two, autographehd Within Temptation posters. Within Temptation are symphonic metal at its finest, so I know y’all want one of these to hang on your wall!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week. This is the last unreadable band logo contest for 2008, so get on top of that shit!

Thanks to MetalSucks Manica Mike Novak for suggesting this week’s logo. ‘Preciate it.

-AR