Alt-rockers Breaking Benjamin top Billboard 200 for the first time

Rock band Breaking Benjamin celebrates its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart – and their best sales week ever – as Dark Before Dawn arrives in the top slot.

The band’s return has been one of the more interesting stories of 2015, as vocalist Benjamin Burnley completely reconstructed the band after legal issues over the name with the group’s previous members kept Breaking Benjamin from releasing anything since 2009.

Country sweetheart Kacey Musgraves finished at No. 3. Her 2013 debut Same Trailer Different Park launched at No. 2 with 43,000 – her previous largest sales week.

Throwback crooner Leon Bridges’ debut album premiered in sixth place. Bridges has caught the attention of the Pitchfork set. The soundtrack to Disney’s Teen Beach 2 cracks the top ten at #10. The accompanying album moved 24,000 units in its first week of competition.

Breaking Benjamin leads a busy new top 10, as four more albums debut in the region.

Only Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas and Eminem’s Lose Yourself have spent 12 weeks at number one, and Wiz Khalifa’s Paul Walker tribute tune is on course to match those hits next week (beg06Jul15) after keeping Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood off the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

In May, Dark Before Dawn’s lead single, “Failure“, became the act’s third No. 1 on Mainstream Rock Songs. Dear Agony also spun off the platinum selling and #1 song Active Rock single “I won’t Bow” where it stayed #1 for five weeks straight while the album itself was certified Gold, selling over 500K copies. James Taylor’s, “Before this World” dropped from the No. 1 spot to No. 5. Sheeran’s collection moved 35,000 units, down 10% from the week before. It featured one No. 1 and two Top 5 rock radio hits (“Breath”, “Diary of Jane” and “Until The End”) and sold 2.8 million units (albums and digital tracks).