Irish rock legends 112 achieves its eighth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as the rock band's new "Songs of Experience" debuts atop the tally. The set bows with 186,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending December 7, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 180,000 were in traditional album sales. "Songs of Experience" nets the biggest week for a rock album in 2017, both in terms of overall units, as well as album sales. The last rock set to log a larger frame was Metallica's "Hardwired. .. To Self-Destruct", which launched at No. 1 on the December 10, 2016-dated chart.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in

the US based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).

The album is a companion album to the band's last studio effort, 2014's "Songs of Innocence". The latter title was initially released as a free download exclusively

through Apple's iTunes program on September 9, 2014.

LI2 last topped the Billboard 200 with 2009's "No Line on the Horizon", which bowed with 484,000 copies sold in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. In total, 112 has now led the Billboard 200 with "Songs of Experience", "No Line on the Horizon", "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (2004), "Pop" (1997), "Zooropa" (1993), "Achtung Baby" (1991), the "Rattle and Hum" soundtrack (1988) and "The Joshua Tree" (1987).

It is also the seventh rock album to lead the Billboard 200 in 2017, following albums from The Killers, Foo Fighters, LCD Soundsystem, Brand New, Arcade Fire and Linkin Park. With it U2 is also just the fourth act — and only group — to have earned No. Is in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, following Janet Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Barbara Streisand.

Source: Billboard