Tool's Fear Inoculum Was The Best-Selling Rock Record Of 2019

When Tool released Fear Inoculum last year after 13 years of false-starts, rumors, and conjecture, the rock world knew it would be a massive hit. That said, the album was coming out in the same year as huge records from Slipknot and Rammstein, making it part of a crop of big-name releases. But now, a new report shows that Fear Inoculum not only sold more than those albums, it was the best-selling rock album of last year.

A report by BuzzAngle Music about consumer trends within the music industry showed that Fear Inoculum was easily the top-selling rock album of 2019, coming in as the #8 best-selling album of the year with 344,285 albums sold, which only came up short of artists like Billie Eilish and BTS.

READ THIS: Lucky 13 - The real story behind Tool's Fear Inoculum

The next-closest rock album on the list was Queen, who came in at #15 and #18 for the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack and their Greatest Hits album respectively. That said, Queen's Greatest Hits came in at #3 on the Vinyl Album Sales list.

Meanwhile, of the last five years (2014 - 2019), the best-selling rock band was Metallica, who came in at #5 total on the list with 2,067,484 albums sold in the former half of the decade.

But interestingly enough, for specific album sales over the last five years, the highest-ranking rock act was unquestionably twenty one pilots, whose Blurryface sold 984,931 albums over the past five years and earned them the #8 spot on that list. This is unsurprising overall, given that Billboard officially declared it the biggest rock album of the decade late last year, but it's interesting to see the album up there next to releases by artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.

Congratulations to all these artists for having a massive 2019 and an even bigger decade.

READ THIS: Tool's new album Fear Inoculum - A timeline of rumors