Glass Animals Score Sales & Chart Bests With Sophomore Album

9/9/2016 by Kevin Rutherford

Liam Cushing
Glass Animals

The act starts at No. 2 on Top Rock Albums with sophomore set "How to Be a Human Being."

Glass Animals roar in at No. 2 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts (dated Sept. 17), as sophomore effort How to Be a Human Being bows with 12,000 sold, according to Nielsen Music. The sum marks the English rockers' best sales week for an album.

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Also in career bests, the No. 2 ranks are new highs for the act on both tallies, as the act's first album Zaba peaked at Nos. 21 and 27 on Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums, respectively, on July 11, 2015 (more than a year after the album's June 2014 release); it sold as many as 3,000 in a frame.

On the Billboard 200, Human Being starts at No. 20 with 16,000 equivalent album units. The set far outpaces the No. 177 Billboard 200 peak of Zaba.

Glass Animals concurrently slot four tracks on the Hot Rock Songs chart, with the new set's lead single "Life Itself" leaping 37-21 (notably up by 128 percent to 946,000 U.S. streams). That's the band's highest chart position, topping the No. 26 peak of "Gooey" in 2015. Additionally, "Youth" re-enters at a new high of No. 29 and "Season 2 Episode 3" (No. 42) and "The Other Side of Paradise" (No. 43) both debut.

"Life Itself" additionally rises to No. 18 on the Alternative Songs airplay chart, marking Glass Animals' best rank (again, passing "Gooey," which reached No. 19).

Also on Top Rock Albums, Stryper (and former Boston) frontman Michael Sweet's solo album One Sided War debuts at No. 4 with 8,000 sold, representing his best debut and peak. The LP also opens at No. 1 on Hard Rock Albums, where it's his first leader. Previously, his Only to Rise (a Sweet & Lynch project, with George Lynch of Dokken and Lynch Mob acclaim) reached No. 6 (Feb. 14, 2015), while Stryper has risen as high as No. 2 (Fallen, Nov. 7, 2015); Sweet's career predates the rock album charts' mid-2000s beginnings.