So where is Tool’s Fear Inoculum in its second week of release?

Fear Inoculum was the big album story of the release of August 30. When the smoke cleared, Tool had the #1 record in Canada, the US, and a whack of other countries around the world. Taylor Swift’s Lover got smoked, despite the best efforts of the Swifties.

A nice victory for rock, for sure. But what about Week 2?

Before we get to the raw numbers, consider the following:

• There were 13 years of pent-up demand for Fear Inoculum. Almost all the faithful went out and bought the album immediately.
• Last Friday saw the release of Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding, a record that was designed to be a big hit [SPOILER ALERT: It was.]
• The only CD we could buy was the version with insanely cool special packaging. Even though it was extremely expensive (I don’t think it could be had for less than $50), it pretty much sold out quickly.
• And because the standard (read: less expensive) and the vinyl editions were not available in Week 1, this created obvious inventory issues.

Here’s what I can tell you about second-week sales/streams of Fear Inoculum.

1. Canada: The album slipped to # 2 on the SoundScan charts, selling 5,114 physical units (There were that many left?) vs. last week’s 21,577. That’s a drop of 76%, which sounds like a lot, but in this era, that’s about standard. The two-week Canadian sales today is 26,691.
2. In the US, sales dropped to 37,736, a hit of -86%. Again, inventory issues probably had an impact.
3. Post Malone had a great week with Hollywood’s Bleeding, selling 23,539 copies in Canada and 489,388 equivalent albums in the US.
4. Meanwhile, Tay-Tay’s Lover stayed pegged at #2 with another 104,210 copies sold.

I’ll keep digging for more stats and report back when they come in.