When you’ve been around as long as Metallica has, and have been as successful as they have, the milestones will start to pile up before you realize it. The latest landmark for the metal kingpins is the news that their 1991 self-titled disc (aka “The Black Album”) has landed its 500th nonconsecutive week on the Billboard 200 chart.
The band’s fifth studio effort — still the biggest selling album in the SoundScan era — has a long way to go to beat out the current record of 937 weeks held by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but it is still one of only four albums to achieve the 500-plus week honor. It joins such company as Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Legend and Journey’s Greatest Hits.
As Billboard reports, Metallica was the group’s first No. 1 album, debuting at the top of the charts in August of 1991 and staying there for four weeks. The band also scored three Top 40 hits from the LP, including “Enter Sandman” and “Nothing Else Matters.” Metallica’s fifth studio album has sold over 16 million copies in the U.S. alone and has gone platinum or better in 17 countries.
This new achievement for the album has likely been helped by the fact that Metallica kicked off the latest North American leg of their “WorldWired Tour” earlier this month and have been in the news a bunch lately with announcements of a deluxe edition of …And Justice For All and the release of Blackened American Whiskey, a collaboration with master distiller Dave Pickerell and Meyer Sound.