Yesterday was a hard day for pop-music fans. The announcement that American progressive rock/metal act Tool’s album Fear Inoculum is No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 shook the internet. The reason is that the album pushed Taylor Swift’s LP Lover to the second place.
Twitter is buzzing with Swift fans who are primarily in confusion as to who Tool is. There have also been calls to stream Lover more to throw Tool off from the top spot.
Tool’s album is currently at No. 1 with the biggest week for any rock album in over one year. Fear Inoculum has 270,000 equivalent album units sold in the week ending on Sept. 5 in the U.S., as per reports. Out of this number, 248,000 were in album sales.
As different from other major album releases, Fear Inoculum got to No. 1 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.
It was sold only in two formats: a digital download and a limited-edition CD, which was physically packaged with a 4-inch HD screen and exclusive video footage, a two-watt speaker and a 36-page booklet.