Metal By Numbers is a weekly column in which we look at the top metal sellers and debuts of the week.
This week saw a lot of metal bands rank either higher than their previous release or for the first time ever. But the highest rock debut comes from Christian metalcore group The Devil Wears Prada’s new EP Zombie. This marks the band’s highest ranking release, though not by much. Though 2009’s With Roots Above Branches Below only ranked at #11, it did sell 31,000 copies, compared to Zombie’s 24,600. Whether or not this is a sign of weaker album sales, this is still a great first week for The Devil Wears Prada and all an all a good one for metal as well.
Notable Debuts:
The Devil Wears Prada, Zombie EP (Ferret) #10, 24,600
The EP’s theme surrounds a zombie apocalypse due to singer Mike Hranica’s interest in the subject. Well that wasn’t obvious. If you wanna get technical, Jesus was the original zombie. O.Z.!
Apocalyptica, 7th Symphony (Jive) #31, 12,900 sold
Their new record marks their highest chart appearance to date (2007’s Worlds Collide debuted at #59). The song with Gojira’s Joseph Duplantier is monstrous.
The Sword, Warp Riders (Kemado) #47, 9,000 sold
Their last album, 2008’s Gods Of The Earth only reached #102 on the charts (selling a little more than 7,400). So in other words, this truly is a great week for The Sword.
Blind Guardian, At the Edge of Time (Nuclear Blast) #105, 4,400 sold
The German power metallers sell over 1,000 copies more than their previous album, 2006’s A Twist In The Myth. A very good first week for them indeed.
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Big Jay Oakerson has made a name for himself in the past year or so. In addition to appearing on the IFC show Z-Rock and having an album come out on Comedy Central (last year’s An American Storyteller), Jay spent his Spring and Summer on the road serving as the MC for the Jagermeister Music Tour and the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest. Now he’s returning to where he’s most comfortable: comedy clubs. While you might have seen him in between metal bands for the past few months, he’ll be able to stretch out and do a full set at Caroline’s, one of the most renowned comedy clubs in the country. He’ll be hosting “Big Jay Oakerson’s Dirty Minds” tour featuring Kurt Metzger and Mike Vecchione, and Metal Insider has got your tickets to see the tour when it hits Caroline’s in New York City next week! He’ll be doing four shows starting next Thursday.Here are the dates and times.
Thursday, 9/9 @ 10:00 PM
Friday 9/10, @ Midnight
Saturday 9/11 @ Midnight
Sunday 9/12 10:00 PM
Metal Insider has two pairs of tickets for each show. To get tickets, simply leave a comment in the section below stating which show you’d like to go to. We’ll be giving them out on a first come, first serve basis, and in the event of multiple entries for each show, winners will be chosen at random. In addition, you can also enter at our sister site The Laugh Button.
With their album titled The World is Ours and song titles taken from Al Pacino movies, Sumerian band Upon a Burning Body take their gangster movies pretty seriously. So when they saw that crabcore progenitors Attack Attack! are calling their upcoming tour the “This Is A Family” tour, they weren’t too happy with the guys jacking their vibe. Attack Attack! have been called out by a lot of metal fans, but this is the first time we’ve seen a band literally take aim at them. This is pretty awesome, and worth it for the payoff.
Godsmack has added more dates to their upcoming tour with Five Finger Death Punch and Drowning Pool.
MetalInjection.net has posted footage of Vital Remains performing “Dechristianize” live during the Summer Slaughter 2010 stop in Baltimore, MD online.
The Acacia Strain has released a new video for the song “The Hills Have Eyes.”
Witchery has posted a new video for the song “Conqueror’s Return” online.
Underoath has set Ø (Disambiguation) as the title to their new album, which will be released on November 9 via Solid State/Tooth & Nail records.
Shadows Fall guitarist Jon Donais will be featured in the sixth issue of the Eternal Descent comic book series. The issue, titled “Embrace Annihilation,” was inspired by the Shadows Fall song of the same name.
So by now, a lot of you have decided to like Pantera. Wait, let me start over again. You’ve loved them for over 20 years, but a lot of you have started to like them on Facebook in order to hear the previously-unreleased song “The Will To Survive.” In fact, their page has nearly 1.5 million fans, many of whom rushed to the social network yesterday to hear the Cowboys From Hell-era demo track, which will be included on the three-disc and box set editions of the 20th anniversary of CFH.
Apparently there was enough confusion about the song in the comments section that the keepers of the page needed to give some additional information.
Lots of you seem to be confused about “The Will to Survive”. Just to clarify, this is a demo track from the Cowboys From Hell Demos. It was recorded in 1989 & was not included on the original release of Cowboys From Hell. It is going to be included on the 20th Anniversary 3cd deluxe set (instore 9/14) as well as the Ultimate box set (Instores 11/22). And yes, that is Philip singing.
So what are our thoughts on the song? Well first of all, it’s a demo of a non-album track. That means “didn’t make the cut for the album.” Secondly, it was 1989. Just look at the above photo from the band’s previous album, Power Metal, to see where they were then. Dimebag Darrell was still “Diamond” Darrell, and Phil Anselmo was way more on the metal side of the fence than the hardcore side. Cowboys was the sound of the band finding themselves, transitioning from a glam/power hybrid to the band that would come to define metal in the ’90s. The riffing on the track is vintage Dime – and then Phil starts singing. It definitely sounds like there’s some Priest worship going on, and when the chorus comes along, it sounds a lot more like Queensryche than anyone in the band would probably want to admit. But at the end of the day, it’s still Pantera, it’s a pretty solid song, and while it may not have held up as well as the rest of the album it didn’t make the cut for, it’s something that any Pantera completist will want. Our thoughts on the song can be perfectly summed up by friend of Metal Insider Jen Guyre, who said “I want to make an 80s montage of me learning to fight or training for a skateboarding competition to the new old Pantera track.”
Posted by Zach Shaw on Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Metal By Numbers