METALLICA's 'S&M2' Live Album Enters BILLBOARD Chart At No. 4

According to Billboard, METALLICA's new live set, "Metallica And San Francisco Symphony: S&M²", has entered the Billboard 200 chart at position No. 4. The effort, which was recorded exactly a year ago, earned 56,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending September 3, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.

Of the 56,000 "S&M²" figure, album sales total 53,000, SEA units equal 3,000 (translating to 3.6 million on-demand streams of the album's tracks in the tracking week) and TEA units represent a negligible figure.

METALLICA and San Francisco Symphony's September 6 and September 8, 2019 "S&M²" concerts were historic on multiple levels: They served as the grand opening of San Francisco's Chase Center, reunited the band and Symphony for the first time since the 1999 performances captured on the Grammy-winning "S&M" album, and featured the first-ever symphonic renditions of songs written and released since those original "S&M" shows.

On August 29, METALLICA broadcast a show to hundreds of drive-in and outdoor theaters across the U.S. and Canada, as part of the "Encore Drive-In Nights" series. The concert was filmed nearly three weeks earlier, on August 10, at the Gundlach Bundschu winery, about a 30-minute car ride from the band's headquarters in San Rafael, California, and was subsequently edited and mixed by the band's award-winning production team to the highest standards possible.

Last month, METALLICA took part in an interview and short performance on "The Howard Stern Show".

In early May, the four members of METALLICA overcame social distancing to record a new version of their song "Blackened", with each member separated in his own home. The split-screen video was posted to the band's social media channels.

METALLICA had been largely out of the public eye since last fall when the band canceled an Australian tour and announced that frontman James Hetfield was returning to rehab for the first time since 2002 to battle his addictions.

Photo credit: Anton Corbijn