Rock Hits
Pearl Jam, Sevendust Crash Billboard’s Top 10 Albums

Pearl Jam, Sevendust Crash Billboard’s Top 10 Albums

It was a good week for rock on the Billboard 200 Album Chart, with Pearl Jam's MTV Unplugged set surging into the Top 10 and Sevendust's latest effort Blood & Stone also delivering a solid start.

Pearl Jam's MTV Unplugged set became the band's 14th Top 10 album on the Billboard 200, owing its rise in sales to an Oct. 22 reissue on vinyl as well as its first ever release as a digital download and as a CD. The record, which had placed at No. 37 the week prior, sold 12,000 copies (that's a 286 percent raise over the previous week).

The band initially recorded the performance for MTV back in 1992 right at the height of the rise of their debut album Ten. The first stand-alone commercial release of the MTV Unplugged set came November of last year when it was released as a Record Store Day Black Friday offering.

Also enjoying a big week this week are Sevendust. The band's 13th album and the follow-up to 2018's All I See Is War debuted at No. 9. The group issued their stellar cover of Soundgarden's "The Day I Tried to Live" earlier this year, with the song "Dying to Live" getting some run in the lead up to the album release. Blood & Stone sold a total of 10,500 copies in its inaugural week.

Various types of rock are also taking up other spots in the top 10 with classic rock artist Bruce Springsteen taking the top spot with his Letters to You album. Alt rock outfit Gorillaz slip in at No. 3 with Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. Tom Petty tumbles a spot with Wildflowers at No. 4, while guitar great Joe Bonamassa's Royal Tea arrives at No. 6.

See Pearl Jam in the Top 90 Rock + Metal Albums of the '90s