Rime of the Ancient Mariner

How good is Rime of the Ancient Mariner on a scale of 1-10?

  • Total voters
    20
The best version of this song for me has to be the Flight 666 version. Everything about it just incredible.

The way Bruce screams "Down in falls comes the RAAAAAAIIINNNNN", followed by Adrian's incredible solo. I get chills everytime I hear it.
 
10/10. For more reasons I can name. I don't have an exact ranking of my all time favorite songs, but I do have a personal no-brainer top three for the songs that most changed how I understand music. Rime is in that top three of the songs that most changed my life.

Just one good reason why in this post, for the H of it: because Steve & the lads went for it. This is an ambitious work that says "we don't want to be just another rock band playing just another rock song." When bands do this - even when they fail horribly in the attempt - they earn my respect for going above and beyond.
 
10/10. It might not be in my top 10 (is it? I don't know myself) and I still think it's a wee bit overrated (more in the way it doesn't stand head and shoulders above everything else as many seem to think), but the greatness is hard impossible to deny. From that part where it picks steam after the boat creaks, along the "raaaaain", solos and the instrumental part up until the very finish, it is one of Maiden masterpieces.
 
Had anyone in metal tried this when Steve did? It's a monster and likely the most influential thing on the album. Even today this track is special when it is busted out.
 
9.

A fantastic song but I don't think it's the be all and end all that everyone else does.

Rankings:

Previous Albums:

1980 - Iron Maiden - 6.67

8 - Prowler
6 - Sanctuary
7 - Remember Tomorrow
6 - Running Free
9 - Phantom Of The Opera
7 - Transylvania
4 - Strange World
6 - Charlotte The Harlot
7 - Iron Maiden

1981 - Killers - 5.91

6 - The Ides Of March
6 - Wrathchild
6 - Murders In The Rue Morgue
5 - Another Life
5 - Genghis Khan
5 - Innocent Exile
8 - Killers
5 - Prodigal Son
8 - Purgatory
6 - Twilight Zone
5 - Drifter

1982 - The Number Of The Beast - 7.56

6 - Invaders
7 - Children Of The Damned
8 - The Prisoner
7 - 22 Acacia Avenue
9 - The Number Of The Beast
10 - Run To The Hills
6 - Gangland
5 - Total Eclipse
10 - Hallowed Be Thy Name

1983 - Piece Of Mind - 7.44

8 - Where Eagles Dare
9 - Revelations
9 - Flight Of Icarus
7 - Die With Your Boots On
8 - The Trooper
7 - Still Life
6 - Quest For Fire
6 - Sun And Steel
7 - To Tame A Land

1984 - Powerslave - 6.75

8 - Aces High
7 - 2 Minutes To Midnight
3 - Loss Fer Words
7 - Flash Of The Blade
5 - The Duellists
6 - Back In The Village
9 - Powerslave
9 - Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
 
For whatever reason my Pandora app has been playing the heck out of this song the last few days. My commute is about 45 minutes each way so I hit the Iron Maiden radio station and decompress from work on my way home. This song in particular, de-stresses me more than anything else. One of my all time favorites.
 
10/10

The closing track, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a near-14 minute epic based on the 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For the Piece of Mind era, To Tame a Land was a masterpiece. It could have been the epic to end all epics. But Steve Harris outdid himself and wrote his crowning achievement with Rime, which was certainly Iron Maiden’s most progressive track to date. Time changes, rhythm changes, melodic changes…they’re all present here and performed with abundant skill. The middle section is a sound experiment with spoken word poetry and legitimately creepy effects that evoke the sense of sea travel in a creaky, haunted vessel. Rime of the Ancient Mariner is everything that Steve Harris hoped to achieve in his earlier long songs, with more finesse and mature experimentation. It’s a knockout.
 
Forostar said:
Adrian only guitar on Rime!: click
Click to expand...

That's very cool! That makes me wonder - if you have as many as three guitarists (as Maiden do) and want to sound really tight (as Maiden often do), it requires even more work from the guitarists themselves, right? To know when to hold back, to handle the harmony lines in a decent way etc. That must be quite hard, in a very special, subtle way...
 
Everything that needs to be said about Rime has already been said, so I'll keep it short and sweet.

With this song Maiden went from being a really good Metal band to innovators. Nobody had done anything like this before and it totally came from nowhere. It's not even just the length, but the way the song was constructed and the subject matter. It's progressive metal before that was a genre, but still its own thing that has never been replicated. It has the traditional Metal sound of early Maiden, but with something that sets it apart from that. It defies any genre. It's Rime.

10
 
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Mosh said:
Everything that needs to be said about Rime has already been said, so I'll keep it short and sweet.

With this song Maiden went from being a really good Metal band to innovators. Nobody had done anything like this before and it totally came from nowhere. It's not even just the length, but the way the song was constructed and the subject matter. It's progressive metal before that was a genre, but still it's own thing that has never been replicated. It has the traditional Metal sound of early Maiden, but with something that sets it apart from that. It defies any genre. It's Rime.

10
Click to expand...
Great way to put it, I agree completely.
 
The absolute audacity of this song! 14 minutes long and based on an 18th C. Poem. Who else could get away with it and make it as fucking cool?

I love all the different sections. The atmosphere created with that simple riff overlayed by the spoken verse in the middle section. Spinetingling. Then the aggression of the build. Bruce's vocal is astonishing here. Then comes that incredible climax, possibly the most enthralling moment in the history of Maiden (the Live after Death version is breathtaking).

Possibly their greatest achievement.

10
 
10/10 is what I'm allowed to rate this song since this is my all time favorite Iron Maiden song, if I could I'll gladly give this song a 100/10, at 13 and a half minutes this song never lets up, this song has everything I love in a metal/rock tune.
 
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