Metallica’s new album, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, is also hardwired to take over the album charts. The legendary rock band nabs their sixth number one record this week with massive numbers, and their first full-length in eight years shows that the band certainly hasn’t lost their touch.
Hardwired gets number one honors with sales figures of 291,000 equivalent albums sold – 282,000 of those were traditional sales. Though their 2008 record, Death Magnetic, debuted with sales nearing half a million, the fact that there’s such a small gap between streaming sales and traditional sales says that Metallica fans definitely prefer to listen to their favorite band via purchase. Hardwired’s debut makes it the third largest of the year behind Drake’s Views and Beyonce’s Lemonade, so it’s in some pretty good company.
Number two this week goes to Bruno Mars’ new record, 24k Magic, and it falls behind Metallica by a hefty amount. However, even with its second place 231,000 sales number, it makes for Mars’ highest selling debut to date. Both records are some of the best of the year in their respective genre, so charting this high is well deserved for both. For next week, early projections are putting The Weeknd’s Starboy at number one with numbers ranging between 340,000 to 350,000.
