One of the few good things about a modern internet twisted into a surveillance state is that, thanks to the tech industry’s obsession with predatory data collection, I can more easily gauge the exposure of underground metal bands. That’s, uh, not much of a good thing, but it’s lemonade. And within the pulp of that lemon-squeezing exists many metrics programmed solely for the purpose of proving popularity: YouTube views, Spotify listeners, Bandcamp collections…Scrobbles, I guess, if you’re still doing in that in 2020. These are the new markers of “making it”. Those metrics come with a host of their own insidious hangups, but the positive take is that you no longer need to be an insider to gauge which bands have broken out, or broken out as much as underground metal can. We are the gatekeepers and we are the screamers of screams.
Of course, it hasn’t always been like that. One of the bigger frustrations I face when attempting to fact-check the legends surrounding older metal bands is the paucity of reliable sales data. Because of that, it’s hard to measure these bands’ actual impact. Sure, you can kind of reverse engineer an artist’s approximate footprint by looking at tour packages, zine reviews, thanks-list mentions, contemporary ‘influenced-by’ namedrops, etc. But when a band’s bio says something like, “Wow, we totally had one of the best selling shirts in the world,” it’s hard not to assume it’s bullshit because there’s nothing quantifiable backing that statement up. It gets even harder when reissue labels step in. They have a vested interest in inflating half-remembered conquests. “This hamfisted spud we’ve repressed on a $50 limited picture disc was…[*stares intently at bottom line*]…one of the hottest bands in the tape trading circuit, we swear!”
Nuclear War Now! Productions’s 666 compilation, out on August 15, is a pretty standard example of legend inflation. Heavily influenced by Motörhead and Venom, the Norwegian youngsters got rolling early, forming in 1982. The band also had a forward-thinking interest in theatrics. Here’s a bit from the NWN!’s PR spiel:
Even more so than the themes addressed in song titles and lyrics, it was the band’s stage show that truly served as a harbinger of what was to come later with the development and proliferation of second-wave black metal. Replete with pyrotechnics, buckets of blood, and a huge inverted wooden cross in the center of the stage, 666 clearly upped the standard heavy metal ante and drifted more towards a cult-like ritual at its gigs. Furthermore, the physical sound at these live performances was raucously excessive and often resulted in damaged speakers and an incitement of the crowd to “conquer the stage,” in the words of band manager Dag Erik Salsten.
https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/666
On the one hand, I’m glad this stuff is being documented. 666 is fun for what it is. It’s great that it’s receiving the same kind of curated attention as the proto-metal curios that Rockadrome, High Roller Records, and Rise Above Relics have rescued from obscurity. It would’ve made for a quirky highlight on an Aquarius Records list. And, as only NWN! can, the release looks like a million bucks, including some truly awesome period photos. (Also, worth noting: 666’s “666” is on the compilation 666. Put it on the trifecta board…yes.) To be clear, labels should keep unearthing fossils like this, expanding the historical scope of the culture. I’m definitely not bemoaning that. It’s awesome. I live for this shit.
On the other hand, there’s the sales spin. To justify its existence, 666 is painted as an “antecedent of Mayhem”, one that “predated its much more renowned compatriots by two years and also deserves recognition in this conversation”. Accurate. True? Eh…. Granted, this legend inflation is a necessary evil in this overstuffed marketplace. But, it still ends up influencing the conversation, especially when this compilation’s context wears off and it becomes just another release.
Once that occurs, the pitch is indistinguishable from the legend and is thus taken as primary source verification since metal doesn’t have the journalistic infrastructure to do much else than regurgitate PR copy. This acceptance and norming of hyperbolic pull quotes is further exacerbated in our brave new streaming world where new, contextless listeners skip the old, agreed upon intro classics and reach for the rare stuff first because they see that people in the know have fetishized those objects. Why chew on the bone when you can stream the marrow?
Of course, as historians have been trying to sort out since Herodotus, all of this importance-measuring is suspect anyway because “impact” is a pretty fluid thing depending on where you’re looking and who is doing the telling. The legend of 666 has likely been polished by the aforementioned manager, Dag Erik Salsten, who released three 666 live compilations on his No Noise Reduction label. Again, a manager is uniquely motivated to goose the importance of their band.
Here’s the interesting thing, though: Salsten is the father of Sergeant Salsten, the speed metal badass in Deathhammer and Torpedo. The younger Salsten’s first band, Warfield, covered “666” on its only demo, Midnight Thrash Ritual. That’s a cool story! That’s an undeniable impact! Is it a “deserves recognition in this conversation” kind of impact? Well, your mileage may vary. But if 666 means that we get Deathhammer, that’s something. And for me, a person who really likes Deathhammer, that’s a big thing. It’s a fun fact that probably won’t sell many copies of a compilation, but you now have my attention.
Naturally, legend tinkering isn’t reserved for forgotten relics. Much more popular bands engage in the practice. Stephen Hudson, the brain behind the blog Metal in Theory, wrote a 2017 piece “interrogating the origin myth of Celtic Frost” for the old ISMMS site. In it, he explores the veracity behind the following Tom G. Warrior quote pulled from the oral history book Louder Than Hell. I’m going to lazily stand on the shoulders of giants and shamelessly extract the entire quote from Hudson’s post, including citation:
When Hellhammer existed, the band was ripped apart by everybody—fans, media, record companies. Ninety-five percent of all of the reviews of the demos and [1984] EP [Apocalyptic Raids] were obliterating. The words journalist found to destroy Hellhammer are beyond belief. Nobody understood what Hellhammer was doing at the time. The myth of Hellhammer only happened later, after the band was gone.
Thomas Gabriel Fischer, Wiederhorn & Turman 2013, p. 508
When Hudson dipped into Jason Netherton‘s awesome Send Back My Stamps! database of scanned zines, he found alternate accounts of Hellhammer’s existence, including a 1984 interview with Warrior boasting about Apocalyptic Raids‘s sales numbers. Again, consider the source and the fact that these sales numbers aren’t backed up by receipts. But, as Hudson justifiably deduces, it would seem like people did understand what Hellhammer was doing at the time. Or, if you’re ultra cynical, Warrior and company thought it was good sales gamesmanship to voice it in the press.
“Why would Celtic Frost change their story?” Hudson writes. “Well, to be honest, it could just be that 1984 was three decades ago (I know, groan, check your calendars, and sigh…) and they don’t remember it all that well. Or it could be a clever bit of legend-writing, because it does sound like a better story if Hellhammer had to rebuild their band concept and image from scratch because nobody liked them or accepted their music.”
It’s also, you know, completely possible that both things are true.
Anyway, all of this is to demonstrate the relative unreliability of underground metal narratives. Like, unless you luck into an old label’s profit/loss statement that details albums shipped, you can’t form much of an objective marker of success, leaving you to formulated educated guesses or buy into myths that make the Velvet Underground tales seem like they were peer reviewed papers.
Ah, but on March 1, 1991, SoundScan started tracking sales data. And if you were a privileged part of the club, things got a little less cloudy.
SoundScan is the data collection method that has underpinned Billboard‘s music charts since May 25, 1991. Created by media research giant Nielsen, it collects the UPC scans from “14,000 retail, mass merchant, and non-traditional (on-line stores, venues, digital music services, etc.) outlets in the United States, Canada, UK and Japan.”
So, yeah, a few caveats: (1) you’ll notice that there’s no tracking for Europe; (2) this only works if your sales hub has a certain POS system that spits out a SoundScan-friendly text file (early on, Tower Records and many mom-and-pop stores did not and were excluded, much to the consternation of industry elites who could no longer put their thumbs on the scale); and (3) people have claimed that SoundScan adds “weight” to certain stores’ sales (we’ll get to this in a second).
(Worth mentioning: RIAA, which determines sales tiers a la “gold” and “platinum” records, formulates its decisions based on “albums shipped minus potential returns”. Read: bullshit.)
Still, SoundScan proved to be more reliable than Billboard‘s old method of tabulating sales. From Ultimate Classic Rock:
Billboard began publishing a chart of the top albums in 1945. It had gone through many permutations and names over the years, based on the rising popularity of the LP and numerous shifts in the music industry. But before 1991, one thing stayed the same: the method for determining the chart positions. The magazine used a survey method, in which staff members called record stores and retail outlets all over the U.S. and took the managers’ word on what had been selling during the past week.
At best, the system was flawed. A clerk could have a bad memory or a bias for or against certain artists. Some managers likely skewed their answers based on what stock they had and the money they could make. (If you’ve got dozens of unsold copies of Slippery When Wet in the racks, why not claim that’s the best-seller?) In addition, the stores would omit so-called genre albums – country, alternative, hip-hop, metal – when it came to reporting for the overall album chart, even if those discs had outsold mainstream pop albums.
At worst, the methods were susceptible to fraud. Record label representatives “encouraged” store clerks to over-report sales to Billboard by visiting with armloads of gifts. It was another form of payola.
“In the past, the major labels gave away refrigerators and microwaves to retailers in exchange for store reports,” Tom Silverman, then the chairman of the Tommy Boy indie label, told the New York Times in 1992. The allegations weren’t sour grapes from an indie guy who couldn’t compete. In the same article, the president of Tower Records confirmed the practice among his employees, despite decrying it.
Bryan Wawzenek, https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/
Billboard Intern: Hey there, what’s selling at Don’s Black Circle?
Manager: Hold on. Hey, Tim, what are the, uh, kids buying there? Scream Bloody What? Nah, there’s no way. Yeah, hello?
Billboard Intern: Yep.
Manager: Lot of that there Paula Abdul. I’m sure of it. [*hangs up MC Skat Kat-shaped phone courtesy of Virgin Records*]
Regardless of how you feel about the aforementioned caveats, not to mention the way Billboard clumsily rolled in digital downloads in 2003 and counted blocks of song streams as album sales in 2013, the newfangled UPC counter was better than calling people up and asking, “lol, whatcha thinking?” In fact, it must’ve been a legit palantír…provided you could get to the raw numbers. Because, you know, underground metal albums rarely hit Billboard‘s Top 200, and those who wanted to know how the indies were doing probably didn’t have the industry access required to surf the full database.
To that end, whenever sales data for underground metal is leaked, it’s revelatory for dorks like me. Blabbermouth was able to acquire the figures for death metal heavy weights in 2003 and it’s still used as a baseline establishing which old-guard death metal bands are big:
The following are the total sales figures for several of the genre’s forerunners, according to Nielsen SoundScan (all numbers include any DVD and VHS releases, where applicable):
CANNIBAL CORPSE: 558,929
DEICIDE: 481,131
MORBID ANGEL: 445,147
SIX FEET UNDER: 370,660
OBITUARY: 368,616
DEATH: 368,184
NAPALM DEATH: 367,654
CARCASS: 220,734
ENTOMBED: 198,764The top-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era are as follows:
MORBID ANGEL – “Covenant” (1993): 127,154
DEICIDE – “Deicide” (1990): 110,719*
DEICIDE – “Legion” (1992): 103,544
OBITUARY – “The End Complete” (1992): 103,378
CANNIBAL CORPSE – “The Bleeding” (1994): 98,319*Believed to be the top-selling death album of all time, including pre-SoundScan sales
https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/it-s-official-cannibal-corpse-are-the-top-selling-death-metal-band-of-the-soundscan-era/
It’s a shame that these brief glimpses behind the curtain are few and far between. However, for an all-too-brief span, Lita Love at Metal Sludge performed a thankless service. Love was willing to pull SoundScan data by request. She then published all of the gory pulls within a monthly column titled “Sludge Scan.”
These days, you have to access the old Metal Sludge site via the Wayback Machine. When you click through, you’re greeted by Love’s introduction, written in that Suck.com, O.G. internet voice.
Many of the stores that report to SoundScan are weighted in order to make up for those that don’t have SoundScan. For example, let’s assume Tower Records Las Vegas is weighted 9 times. That means that if some knucklehead walks in and buys 1 copy of Slaughter’s Back To Reality, it counts for 9 albums sold in Soundscan. I believe this more than makes up for the mom and pop stores that don’t report. The system is not perfect, but it’s the recognized industry source for actual sales. After all, this is what the Billboard charts are based on.
Lita Love, https://web.archive.org/web/20140905061510/http://www.metalsludge.tv/?cat=410&paged=8
There is no website or magazine I’m getting this info from. You can only get it if you have access to the Sludge Scan computer. Basically, you have to be in the business. And as far as I know, Metal Sludge is the only website spitting out Sound Scan numbers. Worship us!
Additionally, Love warns that the data is “for the U.S. only.” Regardless, oh my, what data it is. I don’t think any of this will challenge long-held assumptions of who did what, but just having it for reference is neat. I’ve pulled the more interesting tidbits out from the hair metal heap for your viewing pleasure. I’ve also included a few bigger bands, whose chart success was never in doubt, for added context. I won’t pull anything that’s noted as being released pre-SoundScan since the sales data is incomplete. Finally, not all of the Sludge Scans were crawled by the Wayback Machine, sadly. This is what I was able to collect.
| Band | Album | Release Date | Sludge Scan Appearance | Sales |
| Acid Bath | When the Kite String Pops | 08/08/94 | November 1999 | 37,023 |
| Amorphis | Elegy | 05/14/96 | November 1999 | 13,104 |
| Amorphis | Tales from the Thousand Lakes | 07/12/94 | November 1999 | 13,498 |
| Amorphis | Tounela | 03/29/99 | November 1999 | 7,219 |
| Anal Cunt | I Like It When You Die | 1997 | October 1999 | 6,427 |
| At the Gates | Slaughter of the Soul | 11/14/95 | June 2000 | 18,092 |
| Cannibal Corpse | The Bleeding | 04/11/94 | November 1999 | 83,151 |
| Cannibal Corpse | Vile | 05/20/96 | November 1999 | 59,067 |
| Carcass | Heartwork | 10/18/93 | November 1999 | 58,645 |
| Carcass | Swansong | 06/10/96 | November 1999 | 22,868 |
| Cathedral | Caravan Beyond Redemption | 12/06/98 | October 1999 | 1,946 |
| Cathedral | The Ethereal Mirror | 02/01/93 | November 1999 | 21,967 |
| Clutch | The Elephant Riders | 1998 | February 2001 | 88,377 |
| Cradle of Filth | Cruelty and the Beast | 05/05/98 | September 1999 | 45,701 |
| Cradle of Filth | Cruelty and the Beast | 05/05/98 | January 2004 | 108,119 |
| Death | Individual Thought Patterns | 06/22/93 | February 2000 | 63,876 |
| Death | Symbolic | 03/21/95 | February 2000 | 33,348 |
| Death | Symbolic | 03/21/95 | June 2000 | 33,730 |
| Death | The Sound of Perseverance | 08/31/98 | September 1999 | 22,732 |
| Death | The Sound of Perseverance | 08/31/98 | February 2000 | 25,405 |
| Dimmu Borgir | Death Cult Armageddon | 09/08/03 | September 2004 | 69,550 |
| Dimmu Borgir | Enthrone Darkness Triumphant | 05/30/97 | November 1999 | 7,098 |
| Dimmu Borgir | Spiritual Black Dimensions | 03/02/99 | September 1999 | 6,843 |
| Dimmu Borgir | Spiritual Black Dimensions | 03/02/99 | November 1999 | 7,914 |
| Dissection | Storm of the Light’s Bane | 11/17/95 | June 2000 | 8,939 |
| Down | II | 03/26/02 | September 2002 | 121,002 |
| Down | NOLA | 09/19/95 | February 2002 | 227,385 |
| Dream Theater | Images & Words | 07/07/92 | February 2002 | 564,982 |
| Emperor | Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk | 05/19/97 | November 1999 | 18,260 |
| Emperor | IX Equilibrium | 03/15/99 | September 1999 | 9,378 |
| Emperor | IX Equilibrium | 03/15/99 | November 1999 | 10,820 |
| Fates Warning | Disconnected | 07/25/00 | February 2001 | 9,078 |
| Fates Warning | Pleasant Shade of Gray | 04/22/97 | September 1999 | 19,157 |
| Fates Warning | Pleasant Shade of Gray | 04/22/97 | February 2000 | 19,496 |
| Fates Warning | Still Life | 10/06/98 | February 2000 | 9,713 |
| Fu Manchu | California Crossing | 2001 | July 2002 | 27,020 |
| Fu Manchu | King of the Road | 1999 | February 2001 | 27,227 |
| Fu Manchu | Start the Machine | 2004 | September 2004 | 1,477 |
| Goatsnake | 1 | 05/21/99 | November 1999 | 726 |
| Hammerfall | Legacy of Kings | 09/28/98 | September 1999 | 8,436 |
| Hatebreed | Satisfaction is the Death of Desire | 1997 | January 2000 | 51,590 |
| Iced Earth | Something Wicked this Way Comes | 06/22/98 | September 1999 | 20,836 |
| Iced Earth | Something Wicked this Way Comes | 06/22/98 | January 2004 | 54,143 |
| In Flames | Clayman | 07/03/00 | February 2001 | 12,146 |
| In Flames | Colony | 05/31/99 | September 1999 | 3,465 |
| In Flames | Colony | 05/31/99 | September 2002 | 22,810 |
| In Flames | Reroute to Remain | 09/02/02 | September 2002 | 5,074 |
| In Flames | The Jester Race | 02/20/96 | January 2004 | 11,317 |
| Iron Maiden | Dance of Death | 09/08/03 | January 2004 | 111,357 |
| Iron Maiden | Rock in Rio | 03/25/02 | May 2003 | 48,878 |
| Judas Priest | Jugulator | 10/16/97 | September 1999 | 102,810 |
| Krisiun | Conquerors of Armageddon | 03/07/00 | June 2000 | 2,643 |
| Kyuss | And the Circus Leaves Town | 07/11/95 | August 2000 | 29,957 |
| Kyuss | Blues for the Rising Sun | 06/30/92 | October 1999 | 38,016 |
| Kyuss | Welcome to Sky Valley | 06/28/94 | October 1999 | 30,704 |
| Manowar | Louder Than Hell | 04/29/96 | December 1999 | 34,734 |
| Manowar | Triumph of Steel | 09/29/92 | December 1999 | 58,580 |
| Mastodon | Leviathan | 08/31/04 | September 2004 | 14,977 |
| Megadeth | Countdown to Extinction | 07/14/92 | September 1999 | 1,973,592 |
| Meshuggah | Destroy Erase Improve | 05/12/95 | September 2002 | 31,390 |
| Metal Church | Masterpeace | 07/22/99 | December 1999 | 6,636 |
| Metallica | Metallica | 08/12/91 | October 2004 | 14,119,184 |
| Metallica | Load | 06/04/96 | October 1999 | 4,312,950 |
| Metallica | Reload | 11/18/97 | October 1999 | 3,116,359 |
| Morbid Angel | Formulas Fatal to the Flesh | 02/24/98 | October 1999 | 33,993 |
| Mr. Bungle | California | 07/13/99 | November 1999 | 43,185 |
| Napalm Death | Words from the Exit Wound | 10/26/98 | October 1999 | 6,102 |
| Nebula | Atomic Ritual | 09/23/03 | August 2004 | 7,286 |
| Neurosis | Through Silver in Blood | 04/02/96 | November 1999 | 23,849 |
| Neurosis | Times of Grace | 05/04/99 | November 1999 | 11,507 |
| Nevermore | Dead Heart in a Dead World | 09/13/00 | October 2002 | 21,779 |
| Nightwish | Once | 06/07/04 | November 2004 | 11,005 |
| Orange 9MM | Tragic | 1996 | December 1999 | 47,756 |
| Pantera | Vulgar Display of Power | 02/25/92 | October 1999 | 1,565,741 |
| Pentagram | Be Forewarned | 4/1994 | November 1999 | 887 |
| Primal Fear | Jaws of Death | 06/10/99 | December 1999 | 1,761 |
| Primal Fear | Primal Fear | 12/17/97 | December 1999 | 2,238 |
| Probot | Probot | 02/10/04 | August 2004 | 116,643 |
| Queensryche | Promised Land | 10/18/94 | September 1999 | 734,766 |
| Riot | Sons of Society | 09/07/99 | December 1999 | 2,120 |
| Samael | Ceremony of Opposites | 02/18/94 | June 2000 | 13,581 |
| Samael | Passage | 08/19/96 | June 2000 | 11,788 |
| Sentenced | Crimson | 12/17/00 | August 2000 | 3,557 |
| Shadows Fall | Of One Blood | 04/04/00 | August 2000 | 5,629 |
| Shadows Fall | The War Within | 09/21/04 | November 2004 | 90,634 |
| Slayer | Diabolus In Musica | 06/09/98 | September 1999 | 200,908 |
| Slayer | God Hates us All | 09/11/01 | September 2002 | 199,910 |
| Soilent Green | Sewn Mouth Secrets | 10/06/98 | November 1999 | 7,793 |
| Soilwork | A Predator’s Portrait | 12/19/01 | October 2002 | 8,443 |
| Soilwork | Natural Born Chaos | 03/25/02 | October 2002 | 11,167 |
| Spirit Caravan | Dreamwheel | 11/02/99 | November 1999 | 181 |
| Terror | One With the Underdogs | 2004 | August 2004 | 7,261 |
| The Dillinger Escape Plan | Calculating Infinity | 1999 | June 2000 | 12,290 |
| Tiamat | Wildhoney | 09/01/94 | December 1999 | 7,879 |
| Turmoil | The Process Of | 1999 | June 2000 | 4,352 |
| Type O Negative | Life is Killing Me | 06/17/03 | February 2004 | 98,715 |
| Type O Negative | World Coming Down | 09/21/99 | January 2004 | 209,872 |
| Unearth | The Oncoming Storm | 06/29/04 | August 2004 | 40,815 |
| Voivod | Voivod | 03/04/03 | May 2003 | 10,047 |
The post-1999 data is a little less interesting as Love tired of people requesting inconsequential bullshit. “Has anybody really heard of these bands?” Love writes, referencing the paltry returns of Goatsnake, Las Cruces, Lid, Pentagram(!), and Spirit Caravan. “Las Cruces must be the biggest losers around because they only sold 19 copies of their album. Most bands have at least three members, plus family and friends, so any band should automatically be over 30, at least! The CD is even available through CD Now, and they still haven’t sold more than 19 copies. Total losers.” Ouch.
Anyway, Love’s ire aside, you can still see a few mini-narratives and surprises popping out of this dataset:
- Imagine having to live with the fact that you sold fewer albums than an A.C. that was far past its sell-by date. In a touch under two years, over 6,000 people thought, yes, Kyle from Incantation does have a mustache.
- I legit did not know that Clutch does numbers. That band’s fanbase paints itself like outsider smarks.
- It’s a bit weird to think that Symbolic sold half of what Individual Thought Patterns did. Symbolic is held in higher regard now. What’s the deal? Did Patterns have wider distribution? Seems odd.
- That is no typo: Dimmu Borgir is big. Death Cult Armageddon ended up doing over 130,000 in sales in the US, per Blabbermouth, and 500,000 worldwide per another source.
- Hatebreed’s Wikipedia entry states: “Satisfaction sold more copies than any other debut in the history of [Victory Records].” Checks out.
- Took a bit, but you can see that In Flames started to catch-on stateside after a few years.
- Kyuss’s sales, while respectable, pale in comparison to QOTSA’s, which cleared hundreds of thousands of copies of Songs for the Deaf. I wonder what Kyuss’s numbers look like now.
- The Orange 9MM line is there for perspective. Tragic came out on Atlantic and was probably a disappointment for the label. It still sold oodles more than most of the indies listed. That’s the power of marketing and distribution.
- Remember when the NWOAHM was a thing? Check out Shadows Falls’s sales bump.
- Gun to your head, would you have pegged Calculating Infinity to have hurdled the 10k sales mark by 2000? I knew DEP was known when I finally got hip to them around 2002, but I didn’t know they were that known. I’d be interested to know what a band like Converge was doing back then, especially now that it regularly makes the real charts.
Welp, that was a blog. If you find more of this stuff, lemme know.
– Wolf Rambatz
Plague Rages 