Hydra, the sixth studio album by Dutch symphonic rockers WITHIN TEMPTATION, has debuted at #16 on the American Billboard Top 200 Albums chart with 15,144 copies sold during its first week of sales. The album also secured the #1 position on both the Billboard Top Independent Albums and the Billboard Top Hard Music Albums charts. Hydra is currently #12 on the Overall Digital Albums chart.

The band has checked in with the following update:

"Due to incredibly high demand, we are releasing a special Whole World Is Watching EP package with both versions of the single featuring Dave Pirner (SOUL ASYLUM) and Piotr Rogucki (COMA).

The package also includes two demo versions of new tracks that aren't on the album and the video for WWiW. Available in the European iTunes this Friday! More info is available here."

The tracklist is as follows:

'Whole World Is Watching' (with Dave Pirner)

'Whole World Is Watching' (with Piotr Rogucki)

'Keep On Breathing' (demo)

'One Of These Days' (demo)

'Whole World Is Watching' (video with Dave Pirner)

Vocalist Sharon den Adel on the b-side tracks:

'Keep On Breathing' - "I’ve been working on this song with Martijn and we didn’t have enough time to finish it. This track is still a demo version, but it’s definitely worth listening to!"

'One Of These Days' - "This is a special song, but it just doesn’t fit the album. It has a completely different sound than the other tracks on the album, but strangely enough this will probably be my new favourite b-side track."

The Whole World Is Watching EP will be available on Friday February 21 via iTunes in Europe only.

On its February 4th North American release date, Hydra was the #1 best-selling album on both the iTunes Rock and iTunes Metal charts. Hydra continues to hold down the #1 on the iTunes Metal chart and is #1 on Amazon’s Hard Rock and Metal chart for the second week in a row.

Within Temptation would like to express their sincerest gratitude to all their US fans who have made this achievement possible.

In Europe, Hydra debuted at #1 in The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Italy. It also secured the #2 position in Switzerland, #4 in Germany, #6 in the U.K. - the band’s highest entry in that territory to date, and #9 in France.

In the clips below, Within Temptation perform live acoustic versions of ‘What Have You Done’, ‘Whole World Is Watching’, and ‘Ice Queen’ live at Tros Muziekcafé in De Vorstin, Hilversum (The Netherlands) on February 1st.