Heavy metal rockers Avenged Sevenfold top Billboard album chart

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - American heavy metal rockers Avenged Sevenfold topped the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, keeping off new entries by rappers Big Sean and Juicy J.

"Hail to the King," the sixth studio record by Avenged Sevenfold, sold 159,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

It is the band's second album to notch the No. 1 position on the weekly chart, which measures sales figures for albums across all genres.

Avenged Sevenfold led four new entries in the top 10 this week. Big Sean's latest album, "Hall of Fame," landed at No. 3 with sales of 72,000, while Juicy J notched the fourth spot with "Stay Trippy," selling 64,000 copies.

Compilation album "Alabama & Friends," featuring country stars such as Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean singing cover songs as a tribute to country rock band Alabama, landed at No. 8.

Bryan's album "Crash My Party," which had topped the chart for two straight weeks, fell to second place this week.

Katy Perry's pop song "Roar" kept the top spot for the third consecutive week on the digital songs chart, which measures individual track downloads, with 448,000 in sales.

Rapper Eminem's new song "Berzerk" debuted at No. 2, while Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" featuring T.I. and Pharrell Williams, rounded out the top three digital songs for the week.

Overall album sales for the week ending September 1 totaled 4.92 million units, up marginally from 4.9 million sales in the comparable week from 2012, according to Billboard.