Metallica Hit No. 1 With Re-Load

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Metallica dropped another load on the music industry and consumers alike as the band's seventh full-length studio album, Re-Load, sold 435,000 units to debut at No. 1 for the week ending Nov. 23, according to SoundScan figures provided by the group's label, Elektra Entertainment.

It marks the biggest first-week sales of any rock title released this year and trails only first-week tallies by such rappers as the Notorious B.I.G., 2Pac, Wu-Tang Clan and Puff Daddy. Album sales have picked up tremendously as the Christmas season approaches. This week's total was 6.3 million units compared with 4.09 million last week. Showing incredible staying power, the band has been able to continue its selling ways through a variety of changing musical trends that have occurred throughout the band's 14-year recording career.

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Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

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