Score one for the grotesque over the gangsta.
“The Golden Age of Grotesque,” the newest album by Goth rocker Marilyn Manson, topped the album sales charts in the past week, selling about 118,000 copies in the week ended May 18, industry tracker Nielsen SoundScan said on Wednesday.
Gangsta rap artist 50 Cent was No. 2 with his major label debut, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” which sold 107,000 copies, taking its cumulative sales to 4.7 million.
The newest release by Manson, the self-proclaimed “Antichrist Superstar,” features songs with headbanging riffs including “Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth.”
Opening at No. 3 was “Year of the Spider,” by Cold, a post-alternative band based in Jacksonvile, Florida. “Spider” sold an estimated 102,000 copies.
Meanwhile, rock band Evanescence continued its surprise run up the charts as its debut album “Fallen” topped 1 million sales and registered as the fourth-best selling release of the week.
The band, fronted by 21-year-old singer Amy Lee, scored a No. 1 hit in March on the modern-rock charts with “Bring Me to Life,” a metal ballad that first appeared on the soundtrack to the movie “Daredevil.”
Although the Little Rock, Arkansas band got its start in the Christian market, label Wind-Up Records, recently pulled “Fallen” from Christian bookstores after guitarist Ben Moody was quoted in an interview using profanity.
Rounding out the top five albums was the soundtrack to “The Matrix Reloaded,” the highly anticipated sci-fi thriller starring Keanu Reeves that shot to No. 1 in its first weekend at the North American box office.
The sequel sold $93.3 million worth of tickets in its first weekend of release across North America, earning in four days to earn what its 1999 predecessor, “The Matrix,” grossed in five weeks.
About 96,000 copies of the soundtrack sold in the latest week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
