Mushroomhead sold a lot of albums in its first week,
Savior Sorrow. We can't tell you exactly how many, though. Depending on who you're talking to, the Cleveland band's solid new LP sold either 12,000 copies or 26,000 -- something like that.
Trade journal
Hits Daily Double and estimates by Megaforce (a long-running metalworks that's the band's new home) say the disc sold 26,000 copies. Nielsen SoundScan, the generally accepted source of sales data, says Mushroomhead sold 12,000.
According to Megaforce, SoundScan alerted its paid subscribers that figures for the week spanning September 17-24 may be inaccurate. Megaforce theorizes that SoundScan numbers didn't include sales at Best Buy, which was running an exclusive limited edition of the album. It wasn't the only disc with inconsistencies. Megaforce says that figures for the new Elton John album are also 11,000 copies lighter in the SoundScan figures.
Even with the low figure,
Savior Sorrow cracked the top 100 on the Billboard album chart, landing at no. 73.
It's not the seven-man art-metal assault squad's first bad break with numbers. The band's summer concert was by far the largest show of the lackluster CMJ/Rock Hall Music Fest weekend. Held at the 3,000 capacity
Plain Dealer Pavilion at Nautica, the show looked like it was three-quarters full, but the band says its check was based on paid attendance of 1,800 — leaving them to wonder whether the venue was half-empty or half full.
-- D.X. Ferris
