The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time is a book by Martin Popoff who is the editor in chief and writer of the Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles magazine as well as the senior editor of bravewords.com.
He also wrote The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time (2010).
Almost 18,000 individual votes were tallied and entered into a database from which the final rankings were derived.
Martin Popoff then began interviewing the bands that made the final grade, reviewing each track and digging into the history of each song that made the final list.
Additionally, some of the top metal performers were polled and their lists displayed in the book.