NEILSTEIN SOUNDSCAM: VEIL OF MAYA ECLIPSE ALL OTHER METAL BANDS

Veil of Maya, Eluveitie, Corrosion of Conformity and Napalm Death all had big debuts last week, while Asphyx, Caliban, Pallbearer and Christian Mistress all eked into the Current Hard Music Top 100 as well. A good week all around. Let’s take a looksee:

1 VAN HALEN – DIFFERENT KIND OF TRUTH
Last week: 25,242
Cume: 300,022

Fifth week on. I’m sure the Van Halen brothers and their handlers are upset this album has “only” sold 300k by now, but that’s a really solid number in this day and age and they’re cleaning up on tour to sold-out arenas every night and $35 t-shirts. First world problems.

3 VEIL OF MAYA – ECLIPSE
Last week: 7,821 (debut)

Apparently the accidental Spotify leak didn’t hurt this band at all, despite it being posted all over the metalsphere, social networks and torrent sites. By contrast, Veil of Maya’s last album, [id], sold 4,806 copies in its first week — Eclipse is their biggest debut ever, by far! One could wonder what could’ve been if that hadn’t happened, but one could also surmise that the Spotify mistake actually helped build buzz, spread awareness and increase sales. All conjecture, of course — there’s no way to know. Anyway, congrats to the Veil of Maya dudes. 

7 ELUVEITIE – HELVETIOS
Last week: 4,278 (debut)

11 CORROSION OF CONFORMITY – CORROSION OF CONFORMITY
Last week: 3,913 (debut)

I don’t have prior first-week numbers for Eluveitie or Corrosion of Conformity, but those strike me as very good numbers for both.

13 SENT BY RAVENS – MEAN WHAT YOU SAY
Last week: 3,422 (debut)

Who?

15 I THE BREATHER – TRUTH AND PURPOSE
Last week: 2,622 (debut)

22 NAPALM DEATH – UTILITARIAN
Last week: 2,286 (debut)

23 BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION – LIVE OVER EUROPE
Last week: 2,303 (debut)

24 DARK NEW DAY – NEW TRADITION
Last week: 2,174 (debut)

Proof that a proper record label release with real PR is still valuable. The band self-released this same record with a slightly different tracklisting back in August and it landed with a thud. Then Goomba Music swept in, repackaged and rejiggered it a bit, put a promo campaign behind it and boom, 2,200 copies. No one’s getting rich off this record or anything, but that’s a pretty good number for an inactive band that was never very popular to begin with; they hit their target audience well.

52 GOATWHORE – BLOOD FOR THE MASTER
Last week: 812
Cume: 5,037

Third week on. I’m stoked these guys are doing so well.

55 ASPHYX – DEATHHAMMER
Last week: 845 (debut)

67 CALIBAN – I AM NEMESIS
Last week: 670 (debut)

75 PALLBEARER – SORROW & EXTINCTION
Last week: 934 (debut)

Everyone’s talking about this Pallbearer record. Is it sweet?

77 DEATH – VIVUS!
Last week: 573 (debut)

80 CHRISTIAN MISTRESS – POSSESSION
Last week: 537 (debut)

I guess hipsters don’t buy CDs (that’s not a knock on the band — it’s a knock on their fans). Relapse should repackage this as a double gatefold, 180-gram, limited edition color vinyl and they’ll probably sell thousands!

-VN