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TOOL – ‘Fear Inoculum’ takes #1 in it’s First Week, Knocking Taylor Swift off Top Spot

Tool release their first album in 13 years with an astounding 92% of physical sales

Tool returns in strong form at the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart, as the band’s first album in 13 years, Fear Inoculum, debuts at No. 1 with the biggest week for any rock album in over one year.

The band’s third No. 1 bows with 270,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Sept. 5 in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 248,000 were in album sales.

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 are comprised of traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). 

Of Fear Inoculum’s total unit start of 270,000 units, album sales comprised 248,000, TEA units were under 1,000 and SEA units were 21,000 (equating to 27.6 million on-demand audio streams for the album’s 10 tracks in its first week).

Remarkably, Fear Inoculum’s big debut is a now-rare example of a No. 1 album without the assistance of a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer, any sort of album pre-order/pre-sale access code promotion, or a single merchandise/album bundle, all of which have become the norm for most major albums in recent years as artists struggle to sell albums through more old-fashioned or traditional methods.

In total, Fear Inoculum marks Tool’s third No. 1, following 2006’s 10,000 Days and 2001’s Lateralus. The act has also tallied three further top 40-charting efforts: Salival (No. 38, 2000), Aenima (No. 2, 1996) and the band’s 1993 full-length studio debut Undertow (No. 19 in 2019), following its digital and streaming release, along with most of the band’s catalog, which was previously unavailable on any modern streaming platform.

Band photo by TRAVIS SHINN

News Sourced : Billboard.com