NEILSTEIN SOUNDSCAM: THE RELEASE YEAR IS WINDING DOWN

The release year is winding down. Aside from new Megadeth and Animals as Leaders records, I think we’re pretty much done with bigtime new albums until 2012.

The #1 record on the Current Hard Music chart last week came from a band whose music it’d be a stretch to call “hard.” Click through to find out who it was. Blessthefall, Misfits and Wayne Static had solid debuts, while a number of last week’s releases jumped off the second week cliff. All that and more, right here:

1 NEW FOUND GLORY – RADIOSURGERY
Last week: 12,538 (debut)

New Found Glory: still a thing.

2 CHICKENFOOT – CHICKENFOOT III
Last week: 11,978
Cume: 54,452

3 BLESSTHEFALL – AWAKENING
Last week: 11,376 (debut)

4 MASTODON – HUNTER
Last week: 9,367
Cume: 48,211

76% drop in Week 2… par for the course these days. Still, this record seems destined to break 100k pretty quickly, which is great for a modern metal band.

6 MISFITS – DEVIL’S RAIN
Last week: 6,045 (debut)

7 STATIC*WAYNE – PIGHAMMER
Last week: 4,771

I’m in shock that this many people care about a Wayne Static solo record. I’d be shocked if this many people cared about a new Static X record.

8 MACHINE HEAD – UNTO THE LOCUST
Last week: 4,579
Cume: 21,802

73% 2nd week drop. I wonder how these stack up against The Blackening‘s numbers?

14 DREAM THEATER – DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS
Last week: 3,116
Cume: 51,558

I guess these are pretty good numbers for Dream Theater? Like most bands these days I gather it’s all about the touring for DT. And being the elder statesmen they now are, they can charge a pretty penny for that. Yeah, I’d say Dream Theater are doing just fine.

15 OPETH – HERITAGE
Last week: 2,939
Cume: 27,950

3rd week.

27 BACH*SEBASTIAN – KICKING & SCREAMING
Last week: 1,639
Cume: 8,880

Last week I proclaimed that Sebastian Bach was probably bummed the record only scanned around 7,000 first week. This week I gladly eat those words; he was actually pretty pumped! It’s good to know Baz has got some humility left. 

56 BROWNING – BURN THIS WORLD
Last week: 745 (debut)

57 MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER – IV
Last week: 707
Cume: 3333

Week 2.

67 WARBRINGER – WORLDS TORN ASUNDER
Last week: 594
Cume: 2,619

Warbringer have not turned out to be the re-thrash breadwinners Century hoped they’d be. I wonder if they have them in a 360 deal? Because Warbringer is finally in a place where they do quite well on the road.

78 SAXON – CALL TO ARMS
Last week: 472
Cume: 1,606

-VN