It was a long road back but it appears, at least for the moment, that Metallica has regained its crown as America's preeminent head-bangers. Death Magnetic has debuted at #1 on the Billboard album charts, moving 490,000 copies.
While this is a more than healthy sum, it bears noting that Magnetic had a Friday debut (to accomodate a world-wide release), as opposed to the typical Tuesday drop date, and is still far short of the 680,000 units moved by the band's 1996 release Load. Obviously though, those were happier times in the record business. And after the backlash surrounding Metallica's stance against illegal downloading, in addition to an underwhelming fan response to St. Anger, this definitely feels like a win. Maybe now they can finally lighten up.
In other chart news, the late Mitch Hedberg, a long-time SS favorite, registered a #18 entry with Do You Believe In Gosh?, moving 27,000 copies.
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