Album Sweep: May 18, 2013 - Part One...

Hey gang - It's time for the first part of this week's "album sweeps", sampling the records making their first appearance on Billboard magazine's Top 200 Albums chart this week. As usual, I've included links to buy anything if I can, but please get thyself to an indie record store if you could. They're awesome for discovering new music!

The top selling album of the week is the seventh #1 album for country singer Kenny Chesney, who sold over 150 thousand copies of his 16th studio set Life On A Rock. All seven have come in the last 11 years or so since No Shirt No Shoes No Problems did the trick in 2002...

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The other top-10 debut for this week belongs to Texas Country group the Randy Rogers Band, who place their second album in this zone with Trouble at #9. Three years ago they went to #8 with Burning The Day...

Heavy metal act HIM, from the Scandinavian country of Finland, see their eighth studio album Tears On Tape come in at #15. Only Venus Doom has gone higher, reaching #12 in 2007...

 Their are two accompanying albums to the biggest movie of last week, Iron Man 3 - and the Iron Man 3: Heroes Fall - Music Inspired by the Motion Picture set comes in at #16. It includes modern rock hitmakers like Imagine Dragons, AWOLnation, and Passion Pit. The original score will show on on part two of this week's "sweep"...

Besides guesting on execrable racist country songs, rapper/actor LL Cool J returns with his own album Authentic at #23. It's the lowest-charting studio set since his debut Radio went to #46 in 1985; his highest was 2002's 10 which reached #2...

Meanwhile, newcomer rapper Rittz, who is from the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania but now calls Georgia his home, with his debut full-length set, The Life And Times of Johnny Valiant at #25.

The runner-up to Phillip Phillips in last season's American Idol, Jessica Sanchez, has her debut album Me, You and the Music enter at #26. Two of her Idol sets reached the chart, with the Walmart exclusive American Idol Highlights Season 11 EP place at #77 last year...

Los Angeles-based modern rock outfit the Airborne Toxic Event return with their third full-length album Such Hot Blood at #27. Their last one, All At Once, went to #17 two years ago...

 About two weeks ago I got to see Fleetwood Mac in concert again, on the very day they released a new Extended Play EP with four previously unreleased songs, including one from Lindsey and Stevie's Buckingham/Nicks days. In their career, the group has topped the album chart in America four times, the latest being The Dance in 1997..

Singer/songwriter Andrew McMahon, best known for his work with Jack's Mannequin, sees his first solo major release The Pop Underground, a four-song EP, debut at #53...

 Dutch DJ Armin Van Buuren, who just recently played the coronation ceremony of his country's new king, comes in at #65 with his latest album Intense. It's the biggest of his three albums to reach the US chart so far..

That's it for the first half of this week's new crop...out of these eleven the three I'd recommend first are the Armin Van Buuren, Randy Rogers Band, and Iron Man 3 albums...

I'll return tomorrow with part two with new stuff from a former Cinderella man, a punk pioneer, some violet metalheads, and more...