You are right, but both Hallowed and Rime rose above the standard that was set by Phantom.

Also, I don't think I actually said it's popularity waned over the years.

Personally I think it's every bit as good as Hallowed, and definitely better than Rime (which I've always found just a tad overrated).

Ranking the Maiden 'epics':

1. Phantom Of The Opera/Hallowed Be Thy Name
2. Caught Somewhere In Time
3. Dream Of Mirrors
4. Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
5. The Talisman
6. Seventh Son
7. Heaven Can Wait
8. Infinite Dreams
9. Dance Of Death
10. Lord Of The Flies (live version w/Bruce of course)

Something about Slayer:
The band was invited to open for Bitch at the Woodstock Club in Los Angeles, performing eight songs — six being covers. While playing Iron Maiden's "Phantom of the Opera" the band was spotted by Brian Slager, a former music journalist who had, at the time, recently founded the label Metal Blade Records. Impressed with Slayer's performance, Slagel met with the band backstage and asked them to record an original song, "Aggressive Perfector", for his upcoming Metal Massacre III compilation. The band agreed and the song created underground "buzz", which led to Slagel offering the band a recording contract with Metal Blade.

PotO thashy riff, one of the most recognisable from Maiden, was a sure influence for thrash. It was also one of the first progressive songs from NWoBHM and it was surely the most popular from all of them at that time. Composition of the song is close to being perfect as for metal epic. Bruce said that 'This song really is everything that Iron Maiden is all about' and Steve Harris said he wanted Maiden to go in that direction after he wrote the song. And everyone knows how Maiden evolved over the years.
About popularity... Steve wrote special version of Phantom for 3 guitars and since then they play it very frequently at concerts, and for sure more often than Rime. Initial popularity of the songs goes hand to hand since they were loved from the beginning as non-singles epics, but now Phantom is 'more mainstream', has more listeners and it's the most popular song from Maiden first album. Rime is behind Aces High, 2M2M from Powerslave and behind Phantom in overall popularity.

Neg, I'm not posting that much, because I have very little time nowadays, but I'll try to rearrange the list a bit and expand it to '200 greatest metal songs' in some time. It would be awesome if Black Sabbath list in this topic would be complete at that time. The one here is not perfect, I guess, and it would be a lot easier for me to make the list if people would decide which Black Sabbath song is the greatest one.

Fine. I'll put Phantom at #4. (I still think putting it at #2 is stupid).

That mostly looks damn good to me.

The only issue I have is that there's NO WAY that Alexander is a greater or better song than Powerslave.
It's not cliched at all, imo. To quote Triple H, the song is just that...damn...good.

Hey man, Powerslave's my top 5. Someone here wanted a song from Somewhere In Time. I wanted to get rid of Fear of the Dark but fuckin Nesquik was like "You can only get rid of the bottom song"

I would rather have Powerslave on the list, I don't even remember when AtG got on the list. Besides, Wasted Years would be the song of choice from Somewhere in Time, right?

Well it started here:



and from pages 14-15 we arrived at this conclusion.

What we have here is difference of opinion.

Imo, Caught Somewhere In Time is easily the crowning jewel of the album. Wasted Years sounds closer to hair metal or something. This isn't how most people like their Maiden.

And yeah, Powerslave > any song SiT.

Caught Somewhere in Time is not just my favorite on that album, it's my favorite Maiden song period. Of course I want it in the top 10. But then I got this:






So yea...

Let's move on to another band that's rarely talked about.....



Black Sabbath had by far the most impact and influence. The only thing War Pigs and Iron Man have on it is popularity, and even that not by much. War Pigs in particular was a significant influence on prog metal, but Iron Man was really only influential for the riff. And Black Sabbath is more influential than both of them because of the essence and sound of the whole song.

Aside from that, this mainly looks good.
Maybe Fairies Wear Boots > Sweet Leaf?

I'm not doing anything to the Black Sabbath list that doesn't involve Children of the Grave or Megalomania.

Cause that makes sense

You think Black Sabbath should be #1 too?

Neg has really good reasoning behind it. I personally like War Pigs at 1, but objectively it might make sense for Sabbath to be there, given it's importance. In the context of just Sabbath itself though, I'm unsure about the top 3. War Pigs has the acclaim, Iron Man has the overwhelming popularity, Sabbath has the influence.