What is an epic to you?

War Pigs
Into the Void
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Megalomania
Stargazer
Victim of Changes
Beyond the Realms of Death
Phantom of the Opera
Hallowed be Thy Name
To Tame a Land
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Caught Somewhere in Time
Infinite Dreams
Fear of the Dark
 
We've been down this road before, but I have some feelings on this. Epics definitely need length. I don't think short songs can be epic, no matter the subject matter and no matter the intensity of the music. Epics need time to develop. But they also need gravitas. They have to be about something truly momentous, be it a momentous occasion or a momentous journey or a momentous feeling. Fear of the Dark is decently long, but it is not sufficiently momentous. It's a list of things that might scare you, but it's not developed into anything meaningful beyond that. Hallowed Be Thy Name, which is the same length, is about something momentous. It's about the end of a man's life and his struggle with what might come next. The subject matter is treated with that required epic feeling.

For the same reason, The Red and the Black is not an epic lyrically, while Empire of the Clouds is. You can make the inverse argument when it comes to the music, however. Of course, it's subjective. But still.
 
I would say Empire also has more of an epic feeling musically than Red and the Black. The latter is probably the only 8 minute + Maiden song that doesn't really feel like an epic. You could maybe put Angel and the Gambler up there.
 
I think a song can feel like an epic if the music itself is momentous enough, and/or have a feeling of progression. Even if the lyrics maybe isn't epic enough. I actually think of red and black as an epic mostly because of the monumental heap of riffs that's piled up in the second half. It kinda feels big and a bit of a struggle to get through, which makes it feel like an epic.
 
Well, based on all this: a song like "Revelations", for example, which has a decent length based on what some of you have stated. Is it an epic, or is it not?
 
Revelations is fun to sing, but listening to it is meh. I don't consider it epic or an epic. Ask someone else and I bet they'd disagree.
 
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