Always the most literate of the 1980s-era metal bands, British metal masters Iron Maiden often tapped historical events and the great works of literature for subject matter when writing songs. For their 1984 opus Powerslave, the band looked to 18th century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic work “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and penned a 14-minute song of the same name. The song condenses the tale down, but hits on most of the high points of the story. Singer Bruce Dickinson sums it up best in his usual intro to the song when they perform it live: “This is what NOT to do if a bird shits on you.”

Check out Iron Maiden performing “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” live in concert here below.

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.