Photo: Jimmy Hubbard
We’ll obviously give you the bigger picture later this week with Metal by Numbers, but it was a great week for Mastodon and their seventh album, Emperor of Sand. The band’s return to conceptual albums after their last two has been a critical success, and it turns out, a commercial one as well. Billboard states that the album debuts at #7 with 43,000 units sold.
That’s not the band’s chart peak, as Once More ‘Round the Sun debuted at #6 three years ago. However, that was before streaming numbers counted. Drake is obviously streaming a hell of a lot more than Mastodon, or really anyone else. Where the band really win is that Emperor of Sand sold 41,000 actual copies of the album, which is more than anyone else sold this week. That means physical copies of the album and downloads, with streaming and track-equivalent making up the other 2,000. The only other time the band sold anywhere near that much was 2009, when Crack the Skye sold about 41,000 it’s first week as well.
The band did a promotion in which anyone that purchased a pair of tickets to their upcoming tour with Eagles of Death Metal and Russian Circles would receive a physical or digital download of the album. It’s not clear whether those albums are factored in with the first week’s sales. If not, you can expect to see the band continue to have solid sales week much the same way that Metallica’s Hardwired… to Self Destruct has continued to sell. Here are their t our dates:
04/14 Missoula, MT @ Wilma Theater
04/15 Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theater
04/16 Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
04/18 San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
04/20 Los Angeles, CA @ The Palladium
04/21 Phoenix, AZ @ Comerica Theatre
04/23 Salt Lake City, UT @ Complex
04/24 Denver, CO @ Fillmore
04/26 Kansas City, KS @ Uptown Theater
04/27 St. Louis, MO @ Pageant
04/28 Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
04/29 Jacksonville, FL @ Welcome to Rockville Festival
04/30 Ft. Myers, FL @ Fort Rock Festival
05/02 Washington, DC@– Fillmore
05/03 Toronto, ON @ Rebel
05/04 Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theater
05/05 Concord, NC @ Caroline Rebellion Festival
05/06 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
05/08 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
05/09 Portland, ME @ State Theater
05/11 New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom
05/12 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
05/13 Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
05/14 Cincinnati, OH @ Taft Theatre
05/16 Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Theater
05/17 Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
05/18 Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall
05/19 Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Live
05/20 Austin, TX @ ACL Live
