It’s a given that the golden age of album sales are over. Actually, music sales have been on a steady decline since 2001, when file sharing became a thing, and people decided that it was ok to steal music. By the time the music industry caught on to the fact that people might just want to hear a single and not a whole album, people moved on to streaming. So anyway, it’s not often that bands sell more albums in their debut week than their last album, but All That Remains just had the lowest first week of album sales since their sophomore album, 2004’s This Darkened Heart.
The 9,700 copies that Madness sold in it’s first week is less than half of the 19,000 copies The Order of Things, their seventh album, sold it’s first week when it was released two years ago. While it’s certainly a disappointment for the band and label, it doesn’t necessarily mean the band’s fallen out of favor. As stated above, streaming is a lot more prevalent than it was even two years ago. But it could be that, like Suicide Silence, people might just not like the new record. That being said, it’s nowhere near as drastic a change in sound as that album, Madness sold more than double what the SS album did. The band’s single, the title track of the album, is currently #10 at active rock radio, and it’s still on it’s way up, so maybe radio airplay will help. Picking fights with the internet doesn’t appear to have.
