Whitechapel’s Kin: First Week Sales Revealed
Whitechapel’s eighth studio album, Kin, is also their first since their 2007 debut, The Somatic Defilement, not to make it onto the Billboard 200 chart, Lambgoat reports.
Kin racked up a still-impressive 4,500 album equivalent units in its first week of release — 4,000 of which were in pure sales (i.e., not streaming) — enough to score the No. 3 spot on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart and the No. 34 position on the Top Album Sales Chart.
The figure represents a 25% dip in first week sales from Whitechapel’s last album, The Valley (2018), which debuted at No. 143 on the Billboard 200 with 6,000 copies sold in its first week of release.
By way of comparison, Asking Alexandria’s recent album, See What’s on the Inside, sold 66% fewer copies in its first week of release than its predecessor, while Every Time I Die’s Radical suffered a >10% dip from their last record. So, obviously, Kin falls somewhere in between those two in terms of disappointment.
My bullshit analysis: Kin‘s lower first week sales figures are due to some combination of the pandemic, the general state of the industry, and the fact that the band took some big creative risks that maybe didn’t quite land with their fanbase. I obviously dunno what the vibe is in Camp Whitechapel today, but if I were in the band or their inner circle, Kin‘s first week numbers wouldn’t make me shit myself the way Asking Alexandria’s first week numbers would.
Other previous Whitechapel first week sales figures and chart positions, if you’re curious:
- A New Era of Corruption (2010) – 10,700 copies – No 43 on the Billboard 200
- Whitechapel (2012) – 9,200 – No. 47
- Our Endless War (2014) – 16,000 – No. 16
- Mark of the Blade (2016) – 8,000 – No. 72
Kin is out now on Metal Blade. Stream it below and/or purchase it here.
