NEILSTEIN SOUNDSCAM: THE LOCUST HUNTER
I’m officially making the switch from the Top Hard Music chart to the Current Hard Music chart for the purposes of this column. While it’s interesting to see what classic Metallica and Aerosmith albums are charting and I still may occasionally reference the former, the latter chart paints a much clearer picture of the modern metal landscape by opening up more room for new records that sell less than classics, allowing a larger number of relevant new releases to place in the Top 100.
This chart has a slightly different way of tallying new releases, where sometimes they appear as having already been on for one week before official release — I’m still sorting through precisely what that difference is — so occasionally the chart positions are a little mixed up. But this only comes into play much farther down the list and this chart still provides a good gauge of relativity.
Now, onto the releases: as you all no doubt know, Mastodon and Machine Head were the biggies last week, and both did quite well — but the album that ended up at #1 is also a debut, and none of us saw it coming. Sebastian Bach, Warbringer and Maylene & The Sons of Disaster fared well in Week 1, while new records from Rose Funeral, Textures, Suffokate, Rwake, Brutal Truth and many, many more also appeared in the Top 100.
1 CHICKENFOOT – CHICKENFOOT III
Last week: 42,474 (debut)
Amidst all the hooplah surrounding the enormity of last week’s release slate in the metal world, apparently all of us forgot about Chickenfoot, even MS new release czar Vic Vaughn. I don’t hate Chickenfoot as much as the next metalhead, but I also haven’t felt motivated enough to check out any songs from this record. So, yeah, that happened… expect this one to stick around for a while.
2 MASTODON – HUNTER
Last week: 38,844 (debut)
3 MACHINE HEAD – UNTO THE LOCUST
Last week: 17,223 (debut)
6 BACH*SEBASTIAN – KICKING & SCREAMING
Last week: 6,771 (debut)
Baz is probably going to have his panties up in a twist over this number, old-school as he is. But the times they are a changin’: album sales ain’t shit, and you’ve got to take your show out on the road to sell tickets and merch. In that regard, fellating Asking Alexandria is probably the best career move he’s made.
7 ANTHRAX – WORSHIP MUSIC
Last week: 6,480
Cume: 46,083
8 OPETH – HERITAGE
Last week: 5,672
Cume: 25,011
The standard 70% Week 2 drop. This album’s got some life left in it yet, though.
10 DREAM THEATER – DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS
Last week: 4,430
Cume: 48,442
45% drop in Week 3.
18 MAN OVERBOARD – MAN OVERBOARD
Last week: 3,023
24 MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER – IV
Last week: 2,658
I really like this band; unlike most of their fans, I actually enjoy their newer stuff much more than I do their older material.
28 WARBRINGER – WORLDS TORN ASUNDER
Last week: 2025 (debut)
Pretty solid for Warbringer, no? Must be their best debut yet.
39 VOLUMES – VIA
Last week: 1068 (debut)
53 MAN MADE MACHINE – BECOME
Last week: 840 (debut)
57 SAXON – CALL TO ARMS
Last week: 1134 (debut)
62 ZECHS MARQUISE – GETTING PAID
Last week: 679
66 WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM – CELESTIAL LINEAGE
Last week: 666
Cume: 2966
A very metal 666 copies sold in this album’s third week on. Stoked to see this doing so well.
72 FUNERAL*ROSE – GATES OF PUNISHMENT
Last week: 652 (debut)
I thought this band was more popular? Uno 4 life.
73 TEXTURES – DUALITY
Last week: 671 (debut)
76 THIS TIME NEXT YEAR – DROP OUT OF LIFE
Last week: 602 (debut)
87 SUFFOKATE – RETURN TO DESPAIR
Last week: 486 (debut)
90 HOUSE OF LORDS – BIG MONEY
Last week: 466 (debut)
At first I confused this band with Lords of Acid. But nope, it’s THIS band:
97 BRUTAL TRUTH – END TIME
Last week: 424 (debut)
100 RWAKE – REST
Last week: 422 (debut)
Nice to see two Relapse releases rounding out the bottom of this chart. Well deserved in both cases.
-VN
