Album Sweep: November 16, 2013 - Part Two...

I'm ready with part two of this week's "album sweep", sampling the records reaching Billboard magazine's Top 200 Albums sales chart. You can check out part one by clicking here, and as before I've included highlighted links to buy the featured albums and some of the artists' other work...

Coming in at #101 is the veteran punk rock band Bad Religion with Christmas Songs. Yes, you heard that right. Holiday standards done in a head banging way. Moshing through the snow..In their career they have racked up three top 40 albums, with their last, True North, reaching #19 at the beginning of this year...

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


On the other side of the coin, country baritone and Celebrity Apprentice player Trace Adkins enters at #110 with The King's Gift: A Celtic Christmas Celebration. It's his first holiday set. He so far has four top ten albums to his name, with both Dangerous Man from 2006 and Proud To Be Here from 2011 reaching #3 on the big chart..

Progressive metalcore band Erra enters at #117 with Augment...

Warr Acres, a Christian Contemporary music group named for an Oklahoma suburb, debuts at #118 with their second set to reach the chart, Hope Will Rise...

Ironically, a bluegrass trio named The Devil Makes Three are up next at #124 with I'm A Stranger Here. It's their first to reach the "big" chart, though they topped the bluegrass albums list in 2009 with Do Wrong Right..


Russian Circles, an instrumental post-metal band from Chicago, arrive at #136 with their fifth album Memorial, their first to reach the top 200..

Psychedelic rock group White Denim, from Austin, Texas, land at #147 with Corsicana Lemonade, their first to make the chart...

Indie-pop band Hellogoodbye return at #148 with their third album Everything Is Debatable. They took their synthpop debut Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! to #13 in 2006...

Punk and alt-rock god Lou Reed sadly passed from liver disease on October 27, and while his classic album Transformer re-appears on the chart at #98, and his Velvet Underground & Nico set with his former band is in at #129, and his solo Rock N Roll Animal is back at #191, the 2011 compilation The Essential Lou Reed makes it on the chart for the first time at #155..

Southern California deathcore act Winds Of Plague enter at #165 with Resistance, their fourth full-length album. Their last set, 2011's Against The World, went to #60...

Joshua Rogers, the winner of the fifth season of the TV gospel singing competition Sunday Best, is in at #169 with his second album Unconditional. His debut, Well Done, did a little bit better last year, peaking at #163...

Perhaps one of the most revered of Christmas music vocalists, Johnny Mathis, is back at #175 with a new holiday set Sending you A Little Christmas. His first, Merry Christmas, went to #3 in 1959..

Now Christmas, the seventh holiday compilation in the wide-reaching Now That's What I Call.... series, arrives at #186. The first volume has sold over six million copies in the US...

The soundtrack to The Best Man Holiday, a film starring Taye Diggs and Terrence Howard, rings in at #188. It has songs from R. Kelly, Jordin Sparks, Monica, and more. The soundtrack to the first Best Man film came in at #16 in 1999...

Christian music artist Paul Baloche, who was from southern New Jersey, arrives at #197 with Christmas Worship...

Legendary rock guitarist Leslie West, from the 70s blues-rock band Mountain, comes in at #198 with Still Climbing...

The final debut of the week at #199 belongs to post-hardcore group A Lot Like Birds, from Sacremento, California, with No Place, their third studio album...

That's a wrap on part two...out of these seventeen the three I would go for first are the Devil Makes Three, Hellogoodbye, and Lou Reed sets...