Metallica's latest album, "Death Magnetic," sold nearly half a million copies in just three days of sales. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album, which was released on Friday, sold 490,000 copies by Sunday.

The Warner Bros. release was launched worldwide on September 12. U.S. albums usually come out on a Tuesday, and a day earlier everywhere else. It’s highly probable that Metallica's first album in five years will take the number 1 spot on the U.S. pop chart when sales data are issued on Wednesday.

This is the group’s first studio album since 2003’s “St Anger,” which sold 418,000 copies in its first week of release in the US at the time.

According to Billboard.com, Metallica is the first group to have five of its albums debut on The Billboard 200’s number 1 position. Previously, this had happened with the Beatles, U2 and the Dave Matthews Band, with four each. This is also Metallica's seventh release to start with more than 300,000 since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data.

Metallica has released nine studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, twenty-two music videos and forty-three singles. Their sales add up to 90 million records sold worldwide, including 57 million in the United States. The band's 1991 album, “Metallica,” has sold over 15 million copies, which makes it the 25th highest selling album in the United States.

Artists with bigger first-week sales this year include rapper Lil Wayne with a million copies for "Tha Carter III" and Coldplay with 722,000 for "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends."