Boris(Photo via Boris' MySpace page.)Was 2008 another renaissance year for metal? Well, yes -- but the point should be moot by now. Whether metal is "in" or "out" during any given year, the music has gone through a creative revitalization every year -- especially when you consider heavy music and all of its sub-genres as a whole. While the musicians who kick-started what we consider metal today may have set out to make the most raw, gutteral music imaginable, since the early Eighties, those musi
6. Jesu Why Are We Not Perfect (Hydra Head)Technically not a heavy release, but how can we discount Justin Broadrick, founding member of both Napalm Death and Godflesh? Fed up with the single-minded bludgeoning of those classic acts, Broadrick's intention from the start in forming Jesu was so that he could balance his heavy side with melodicism and thick, shoegaze-y guitar layering. But on this EP he reveals some of the most delicate sentiments of his career. Metalheads should be listening to st
​It's enough to make metalhead purists wail and gnash their teeth. Half of the producer/DJ duo Mixhell is Iggor Cavalera, who co-founded seminal Brazilian groove-metal act Sepultura when he was just 15 years old. For the next 20 years, he toured the world and sold out stadiums as the band's drummer, until a 2006 epiphany that came unexpected, at least to outsiders. He changed the spelling of his name from the original "Igor" to its present, two-G iteration, quit Sepultura, and, apparently, dis
