Two Favorite 20+ Minute Metal Songs (that I have)

This one is a long one, sorry if it's too long. I spent like an hour typing it out, so please vote if you can :)

These are all of the 20+ minute metal songs I have on my computer. I added the 19 minute Om - Thebes song to round out the choices to an even 10, and it's near "double epic" enough for me.

Please vote for your favorite two choices, and only two - not more or fewer . Only choose one Symphony X song, if you choose either at all.

For non-metal fans, I challenge you to listen through one of them below. Dream Theater would be a good starting place for prog metal, if you don't like metal, but Symphony X is in my opinion, the better band and is not much of a step up. Opeth and Orphaned Land utilize a lot of harsh vocals, and Scardust utilizes a little harsh vocals. Sunn O))) & Boris is a collaborative instrumental piece.

For established Scardust fans, Pawn and Prophecy features Noa Gruman (Scardust's vocalist) at 2:14 and again at 12:34.

For metal fans, try to listen to one new one, but beware: all ten tracks aggregates to exactly 3 hours, 54 minutes, and 21 seconds, so I wouldn't recommend listening to them all at once, unless you have a ton of spare time.

The embeds:

Drone Metal, 28:14, 2006

One of the bonus tracks from the deluxe edition of their collaborative album "Altar," consisting of the entirety of the second CD. This track features guest guitars from Dylan Carlson of Earth from around 10:35 or so and again from around 21:32 or so. It's instrumental drone. Not much else to say about it. Turns out there's no Youtube video for this one. So I've only hyperlinked the Bandcamp release to the name at the top here, instead.

Symphonic Progressive Metal, 27:34, 2017

For fans of The New Mythology Suite-era Symphony X -- highly orchestrated and classically-driven with a powerhouse of a [female] vocalist, but without the power metal elements. Sands of Time deals with the concept of, well, sands of time. As the song progresses, you can visualize the world around you gradually decaying and falling apart until the singer (Noa Gruman) learns to rise above the ashes and becomes one with time. The song features some impressive bass soloing and heavy neoclassical influence, and when they play it live they have a live action choir to support it, as they did in the studio. I like to consider it to be the metal equivalent of Renaissance. This is the opener of the band's first album, consisting of five acts, each separated into its own track. There's no Youtube video of exclusively all five acts (I conjoined them on my computer to make it into one track), but here's the full album; the song starts at 0:00 and ends at 27:34, for Orphaned Land fans, the song "Out of Strong Came Sweetness," later in the album, features vocals from Kobi Farhi, if you care to stick around :

Symphony X - The Odyssey

Symphonic Progressive Power Metal, 24:07, 2002

The classic. Peak Symphony X. While today the "symphony," which sounds like it came straight out of Final Fantasy XII's soundtrack, may sound a bit dated as it was clearly a midi program, it's still top tier progressive metal circa 2002. A compositional and lyrical interpretation of Homer's epic The Odyssey, this was the climax and penultimate song of the album of the same name, feature heavy use of midi orchestrations, galloping power metal riffage, and "Triumphant Champion of Ithaca"s.

Dream Theater - Octavarium

Progressive Metal/Rock, 24:00, 2005

Considered by many to be the greatest progressive metal epic ever released (please don't dominate the poll...), Octavarium was the album closer, and climax, to the album of the same name. The concept of this album, is "the octave." Each song on this album was played in a different key so the album mirrored an octave, and the album finished where it started so the album is a complete cycle. The song was largely influenced by the progressive rock sound from the 70s, such as Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Yes. Paying homage to their influences, the song references some of their inspirations such as: Day Tripper, Supper's Ready, Day For Night, My Generation, etc. and features a more symphonic sound than for what Dream Theater is usually known. The song closes after making reference to the other tracks on the album while singer Labrie vocally moves along an octave before becoming "trapped" inside an "octavarium," and then cooling down for five minutes.

Nightwish - The Greatest Show on Earth

Symphonic Power Metal, 23:58, 2015

The album closer to 2015's Endless Forms Most Beautiful, TGSoE, is an extended symphonic power metal song that tells the story of Earth's history from a geological, archaeological, mythological, and historical perspective, narrated by British biologist Richard Dawkins. Starting with the birth of the solar system and the four principal Eons: the Hadean, the Archean, Proterozoic, and the Phanerozoic, to the rise of the primordial titans. The onset of life and the rise of humanity, the migration out of Africa, development of religion, thirst for warfare and development of nuclear weaponry, to our eventual destruction. The song ends with Dawkins preaching about how we're lucky to have been alive at all or something like that. It's symphonic metal! Horns go hooonk!

Orphaned Land - Mabool

Progressive Folk Death Metal, 23:45, 2004

Another legendary song. The album closer to Mabool (The Story of Three Sons of Seven). This is actually four tracks that make up one song, but in all honesty, they have to be played together. The album, Mabool, told the story of HaMabool (Hebrew for "The Flood"), the band's interpretation of the biblical story of Noah's Ark. In this version, God created seven angels, and the seventh was divided into three, representing the three Abrahamic religions. The angels then try to convince humanity to stop their sins and warns them of a flood God will spawn if they do not. They fail and a flood wipes out humanity. This song tells the story of the storm leading to the flood and the flood itself. It starts off with a beautiful, folk-tinged acoustic guitar segue before the metal section builds up aggression, mirroring the increasingly damaging storm and subsequent raging flood. It concludes with another acoustic, but peaceful, if not melancholic, Opethian guitar outro with the sounds of water and doves overlaid. Only one version on Youtube is uploaded with just the four tracks (below), but it is old and highly compressed, so it does not sound good. Here is a much higher quality version of it in playlist form:

Mike LePond's Silent Assassins - Pawn and Prophecy

Power Prog (Power Metal with elements of prog), 21:37, 2018

This is fun one. It truly is. Mike Lepond is the bassist for Symphony X post-Twilight in Olympus. This is his alternative project over which he maintains most creative control. Pawn and prophecy is his sophomore album with a sound that sounds like a mix of Manowar and Symphony X. This song deals with the concept of temptation from four witches, with each witch performed by a different guest female vocalist. As mentioned above, one of the guests is Noa Gruman of Scardust (at 2:14 and again at 12:34). While this song starts out as standard power prog, at 11:55 it breakdown into a blues section, before developing into straight up progressive power metal for us to "[soar] higher, on wings of fire!"

Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy

Progressive Neoclassical Metal, 20:42, 1996

Yet another absolute classic. This is one of the few Symphony X songs not dealing with classical mythology, set in the past, but rather abrahamic theology set in the future; this one tells the tale of a war occurring between Satan and God, leading to judgement day in the mortal realm. Man is this one loaded with classical elements. It starts off with a hym sung by Russel Allen before playing some epic riffs and building up aggression, creating an image of a massive war - an apocalypse on Earth. The song then calms down and Allen sings a monologue from the perspective of Lucifer. The song builds up aggression again, representing the final battle between heaven and hell. In the end, evil triumphs and Lucifer has defeated Heaven's angels, however the last few seconds indicate that the battle is not over yet, as it picks up aggression again with a sonic "to be continued..."

Opeth - Blackrose Immortal

Black Metal/Folk/Acoustic Rock with elements of prog, 20:14, 1996

This is my newest addition to my 20+ minute metal collection, and I'm still not totally familiar with it. Just like the above, this one also deals with Satan! A man desperate to see his late love again goes into a dark forest on a separate celestial plane where mortals and the divine may communicate. He calls to a higher power and Satan reveals himself and communicates with him through thoughts. He is transported to where his dead love is, and after grieving over her loss he is sent to Hell and his body rests in this field for eternity. The song is about the man's grievances over death, and his actual moment of death. The whole song is beautiful and does a great job switching between heavy cathartic black metal sections, and light ethereal acoustic sections. There are some pretty crazy riffs on here!

Stoner Rock, 19:09, 2009

This is stoner rock with elements of middle eastern folk. Like all Om songs, this one deals with spirituality from all religions, especially from Orthodox Christianity. It's Om. They get high and write about their spiritual ascension. It's top tier stoner rock, there's not much to talk about here, either.

Again, vote for your top two.

For me, it's Mabool and then a tough decision between Sands of Time and the Divine Wings of Tragedy. But overall, I'm going for Sands of Time, and Mabool!

Somehow I missed it, but my ninth 20+ minute epic (therefore actually giving me ten without the need for a bonus) would actually be Pelican's March Into the Sea, which I'll add below here. Since I can't add any new options to the poll itself, I'll add a comment allowing you to symbolically vote for that one if you want to. Even if you voted for two already, it's fine to symbolically vote for that one, since it didn't get fair representation from the beginning.

Atmospheric Sludge Metal/Post-metal/Post-rock, 20:28, 2005

This one by the instrumental rifflords immediately starts off heavy, sludgey and fuzzy, utilizing abrasive repeating riffs. It continues like this for a good five minutes before it mellows out with a lighter and more melodic sound, before incorporating a peaceful-ish acoustic guitar over the chaotic electric one. It slowly picks up pace again until the song hits it's chaotic riff-oriented climax, at around 11 minutes, and then it abruptly stops... it sounds like the end to the song, but then an acoustic guitar interrupts the silence; this acoustic guitar plays a mellow, but consistent rhythm underlain by electronic atmospheric ambience in a very traditional post-rock sound. A flute is utilized for additonal dynamics. This lasts for the next six minutes, until the ambience completely replaces the acoustic guitar, overlain instead with guitar feedback, and the song fades out for the next two minutes.

The only long Prog Metal song I really love is Second Life Syndrome, which is only 15 mins 40s but is absolutely incredible. Visions by Haken is probably the only 20+ mins song I like.

There's a fair few around 10 mins which are brilliant (Dance with the Shadow, Pareidolia, The Same River, Wasteland for example).

This!