It was a good year for metal, a decent year for rock, a so-so year for electronica, and a not-much-happening year for punk. Every year’s a good one for metal, though. It expands and diversifies, evolving and surviving. Even in the ’90s when the print media – horseshit-talkers to a man – was blethering about “the death of metal” and claiming Kurt Cobain and Nirvana had killed it, actual events proved otherwise. Some of metal’s biggest-selling outfits sold fewer albums during the grunge years, but...