HALESTORM's First Two Albums Officially Certified Gold By RIAA

HALESTORM's first two albums, 2009's "Halestorm" and 2012's "The Strange Case Of..." were both officially certified gold in March by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for sales in excess of a 500,000 copies.

Over the past few years, more and more people have stopped paying to download or physically own albums and started instead consuming music on platforms like Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music. As a result, effective February 1, RIAA started including on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent in gold and platinum album award. The modernization of the program's album rule follows a similar update made to digital single certifications in 2013, when the RIAA first added on-demand streams to its digital single award. Collectively, this now means that the program's iconic benchmarks — 500,000 (gold),1,000,000 (platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-platinum) — count both sales and streams for single and album certifications.

After a comprehensive analysis of a variety of factors — including streaming and download consumption patterns and historical impact on the program — and also consultation with a myriad of industry colleagues, the RIAA set the new album award formula of 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video song streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale. RIAA's digital single award ratio was also updated from 100 on-demand streams = 1 download to 150 on-demand streams = 1 download to reflect the enormous growth of streaming consumption in the two plus years since that ratio was set. Just as RIAA announced when setting the initial formula in 2013, the analysis and the determination of a formula is based on comparative consumption patterns, not marketplace value.

HALESTORM kicked off a major North American headline tour on April 1 at Reading, Pennsylvania's Reading Eagle Theatre in the Santander Arena. Support throughout the trek is coming from special guests DOROTHY and the legendary Lita Ford. In addition, the tour will include stops at a number of festivals and summer radio concerts as well as a pair of much-anticipated dates alongside the one and only ROB ZOMBIE, slated for May 18 at Bloomington, Illinois' Cellular Coliseum and May 19 at Saginaw, Michigan's First Merit Bank Event Park.

HALESTORM's third album, "Into The Wild Life", debuted at No. 5 on The Billboard 200 album chart, selling 56,000 copies in its first week of release — more than double the first week haul of the Grammy-winning "The Strange Case Of…"

HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale said in an interview that the band didn't set out to make a lighter album with "Into The Wild Life" — even though it worked out that way. Hale explained to May The Rock Be With You: "When we were talking about making songs heavier, it didn't necessarily mean stacks of Mesa Boogies and a lot of crunch and layers and walls of guitars." Hale added that the band followed only two rules while recording: "We're not going to record the record in the same way that we did the last two, and is it good or not?"