Neilstein Soundscam: Now With More Numbers!
Many of you complained about last week’s Soundscam column. For those who whined about my column’s lack of sales numbers, I repeat once again: Metal Insider posts metal and hard rock sales numbers every week of the year in their “Metal By Numbers” column! You can and should get sales information there; their sales coverage has always been more comprehensive than mine, and Metal Insider is a great site you should be reading for metal industry analysis anyway. Check out this week’s numbers here.
This re-jiggered version of Soundscam seeks to focus on more than just sales. To that end, those of you who complained that last week’s column lacked many real numbers of any kind had a valid criticism. I will do my best to include Facebook likes, YouTube views, and any other figures I can get my hands on in these writeups. A comprehensive ranking of those figures is not possible, since keeping track of YouTube plays (for example) on every metal video in existence from week-to-week would require a full-time staff. I do not have access to tour ticket sales figures and I do not have access to merch sales numbers, but I do have two eyes and a brain (I think). Figures such as YouTube plays and Facebook likes are also very useful in evaluating excitement for a record that has not yet been released, or for a band that’s killing it on tour but hasn’t released an album in a while.
Lastly, yes, to some extent this is just my own personal hype list and it is very subjective. Deal with it!
Rank / Artist / Peak / Last Week / Weeks On
1. ↑ Coheed and Cambria / 1 / – / 1
New album The Afterman: Descension sold 40,600 units in its first week. That is just phenomenal. Not only did this album’s pre-cursor / part one — The Afterman: Ascension — sell 49,713 units when it debuted this past October, but that record is still on the charts meaning Coheed have two charting albums out at the same time. The band is on a co-headlining tour right now with Between the Buried and Me, and over 44,000 people (!!) are currently talking about them on Facebook. This band is insanely popular.
2. ↓ Hatebreed / 1 / 1 / 2
Sales dropped down to 4,750 from their first week explosion of almost 18,000, but the band is keeping their momentum going by announcing another excellent tour with Every Time I Die, Terror, Job for a Cowboy, and This is Hell in support. The lyric video for “Put it to the Torch” has over 130,000 views and their Facebook page has 681,992 likes with 17,303 “talking about this.” Great numbers by any stretch.
3. ↑ Meshuggah / 3 / 4 / 2
Band is absolutely killing it on the road right now to packed crowds everywhere they go. The official “Pitch Black” video has racked up 70,000 views in just one week, and Jens Kidman’s sickness gave the band an accidental media bump. 8,934 people are talking about the band on Facebook.
4. ↓ Suffocation / 2 / 2 / 2
Pinnacle of Bedlam is out! It’s still the first week so we don’t have sales numbers yet, but the anticipation is there: the lyric video for “As Grace Descends” has 67,000 views and an album trailer released 1 month ago has 32,000. Who actually watches those album preview trailers? People who are really fucking excited about a new record, that’s who. Suffocation have 417,353 Facebook likes with 14,503 “talking about this,” which is a huge number for such a heavy band. Suffocation lose points for not having a tour to complement the album release.
5. ↑ The Bronx / 5 / 6 / 2
The Bronx IV sold 3,100 copies first week, the band is currently on tour, and critical praise is at all-time high.
6. ↑ Intronaut / 6 / 8 / 2
Frontman Sacha Dunable filled in for Meshuggah’s Jens Kidman on tour causing nerd-boners to sprout the Internet over (see Meshuggah, above). The band also played a few new songs live. 3,124 people are talking about the band on Facebook, which accounts for 15% of their total Facebook fanbase; that’s a large percentage. At the very least Intronaut have energized their fanbase with anticipation of their forthcoming album, and at the very best they’re gaining new fans daily by playing in front of Meshuggah.
7. ← Kvelertak / 7 / 7 / 2
While they haven’t done much to keep our attention in the past 7 days, their week-old video for “Bruane Brenn” has racked up 37,000 views (not even including however many thousands of plays it received during the Stereogum exclusive) and 6,651 people are talking about them on Facebook.
8. ↓ Cult of Luna / 5 / 5 / 2
Cult of Luna kept the buzz about their new album Vertikal going by releasing a creepy new video for the song “Passing Through” that’s racked up 18,000+ YouTube views in less than a week. 3,937 are talking about the band on Facebook out of their total FB fanbase of roughly 10x that number; that’s not Intronautian Facebook fervor, but it’s decent. This band really needs to tour the U.S. to keep their momentum going, though.
9. ↑ Ancient VVisdom / 9 / – / 1
New album Deathlike only sold 320 copies first week, but the band has been garnering solid buzz on Metal Injection, No Clean Singing, Brooklyn Vegan, Metal Fuzz and here on MetalSucks. They’re currently touring with Enslaved, which should really help them out.
10. Rotting Christ / 10 / – / 1
I have not talked to a single person in the metal press who hasn’t really, really liked Rotting Christ’s new album Kata Ton Daimona Eautou including our own Sammy O’Hagar who gave it a 3.5 out of 5 horns rating. The band has released a bunch of songs online, the most recent of which has garnered nearly 7,000 plays already. The band’s Facebook presence could use a little help. The album doesn’t come out until March 5 on Season of Mist, so get used to hearing about it a whole lot more before then.
