Even with all the devil-horned hand salutes they've made over the years, metalheads seem to be on God's good side right now. What a great time to be a metal fan. AC/DC's long-awaited return to the road is probably the highlight, but there are a lot of other reasons you might catch headbangers smiling these days.

• Sunday's hell's-freezing-over release of Guns N' Roses' "Chinese Democracy" could go down as the metal event of the decade. Granted, that decade was the 1990s. But after all is said and done and -- as Axl's accountants are praying -- paid for, the mega-budget record really could have been worth the 14- or 15-year wait. (Look for a review of the album, available exclusively at Best Buy stores or iTunes, in Saturday's Star Tribune.)

• One record that would have been worth any kind of wait is Metallica's latest, "Death Magnetic." Metallica fans probably would've been happier if the band had pulled an Axl and shelved its last phlegm-ball of an album, "St. Anger," if it added to the hype for this one. The riffs are genius, the rhythms could knock down walls, and it all sounds like classic (pre-"Black Album") Metallica.

• The current high tide of metal is not all old-school. Nine Inch Nails -- a band adopted by metalheads ever since industrial music went the way of goth and alt-country -- has had one of the most fascinating, innovative years of any rock act. Working without a record label, Trent Reznor & Co. issued not one but two albums for free online this year: the all-instrumental "Ghosts I-IV" and the more true-to-form powerhouse "The Slip," both now available in stores, too. NIN finally comes to Minneapolis on Tuesday, making up for a Target Center show that Reznor postponed in August.

Any disappointment on his fans' part should have dissipated, what with all the other hard-rock treats of late. Now, if we could only get Ozzy to skip the pending "Osbournes" variety show that Sharon sucked him into and focus on another Sabbath reunion, we'd really have a reason to celebrate.