Metallica’s “72 Seasons” gets No. 2 on the Billboard album chart

According to Billboard, Metallica’s new opus, “72 Seasons”, sold 146,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart. It marks the group’s 12th Top 10-charting album, of which eight have reached the top two.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an LP.

Of “72 Seasons”‘ 146,000 units earned for the week, album sales comprise 134,000; SEA units comprise 11,500 (equaling 15.91 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 12 songs) and TEA units comprise 500.

The Bay Area metal legends’ new LP was released on April 14 via the band’s own Blackened Recordings. Produced by Greg Fidelman with guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, it is Metallica’s first full-length collection of new material since 2016’s “Hardwired…To Self-Destruct”.

“72 Seasons” has had the biggest week for any rock or hard rock album since Tool’s “Fear Inoculum” arrived in September 2019 with 270,000 equivalent album units.

This week, Metallica took the top spot on Australia’s ARIA album chart. Completing the podium on the latest survey are Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing At A Time” (down 1-2 via Mercury/Universal) and Taylor Swift’s platinum-certified “Midnights” (up 5-3 via Universal), respectively.