The official website for Gibson guitars has released what they perceive to be the top 50 metal songs of all time. Gibson.com’s writers and editors worked on compiling the list over several weeks, releasing 10 entries at a time, and recently released the top 10, which declared the number one metal song to be “Master of Puppets” by Metallica.

In some ways, the number one spot for Metallica is fitting, considering 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the release of their Master of Puppets album. Having said that though, metalheads are notorious for having fierce and strong opinions about what they consider to be their “top songs,” on top of their fierce and strong opinions about what bands are or are not even metal.

There’s a new compilation album coming out from Iron Maiden, and the awesome music and brutal album cover (click image for the full view of awesomeness) will be coming out on May 23, 2011. For those who are both curious and generous, that’s nearly a week after my birthday [hint-hint!]. Seriously though, this new 2-disc album looks like a ripper. It’s called From Fear to Eternity and focuses on the last 20 years of the band.

In 2009, the Irons released a compilation called Somewhere Back in Time: The Best of 1980-1989, which focused on their first 10 years of reshaping, redefining, and dominating metal. This new album is being touted as the follow-up, and focuses on the releases Maiden has put out there from 1990 – 2010, and is a nice way to celebrate 30 years of the most influential bands in metal.