Metallica's Black Album will not die. The album will be celebrating it's 29th anniversary tomorrow, August 11th, and it will be doing so by re-entering the Billboard 200, which calculates the top albums sold/streamed that week. Metallica's Black Album comes in right at the end at #200, but that's not even the whole story.
.@Metallica's 'Metallica' has re-entered this week's Billboard 200. It's the 4th longest charting and the #1 best selling album in Nielsen history (580 weeks).
— chart data (@chartdata) August 10, 2020
As Chart Data points out, the album is the fourth longest charting album in history behind Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Bob Marley's Legend and Journey's Greatest Hits, respectively.
The Black Album pushed a monster 6409 units this week (which combines pure sales with streaming – 1000 streams equal one album unit). In pure sales, it sold 2,235 copies this week.
Just to put that in perspective it outsold new releases from Five Finger Death Punch (1400), Ozzy Osbourne (1300), Lamb of God (900) and Tool (750) combined – when taking streaming into account!
My buddy, Ryan Downey, who runs the excellent Stream N' Destroy newsletter that analyzes weekly charts, noted that not only did the album reach #200 on the top 200, it's also #49 Billboard Top Albums chart, which analyzes pure sales.
That's an insane position. The Black Album was the 49th most sold album in the country this past week (again, not taking any streaming into account). That's blockbuster numbers for a 29 year old album.
Who is still buying this album? I will never know, but it's a beast that will not stop.
