METAEPITOME

I had forgotten what a great album this is. I am going to see Overhead perform in Veruno at a festival in a couple of weeks so I have rooted out their albums for another listen. I first came across Overhead at another festival, ProgResiste at the Spirit of 66 in 2006, the year after they released "Metaepitome". I was very impressed with their performance, very powerful and Alex Keskitalo had a great stage presence. The intensity of the concert reminded me of Riverside, another great band to see live.

The album opens with the epic title track clocking in at 19:40 minutes. This is a superb progressive suite with a number of changes in tempo ranging from mellow to aggressive.

"Warning: Ending (Without Warning)" follows this. It opens with some interesting keyboard playing, the bass then joins in forming a nice introduction before the remaining players become involved, there is some good flute playing as well from Alex Keskitalo in this introductory section.

"Point of View" is the third track and starts in a mellow mood with Alex Keskitalo's vocals backed by acoustic guitar, then electric guitar. Jaako Kettunen puts in a fine performance on this track with some excellent guitar playing upto about the 4:30 minute mark when Alex returns on vocals.

"Butterfly's Cry" displays nice interplay between keyboards and bass at the start. It is one of the more mellow tracks and features some fine work by Tarmo Simonen on keyboards

"Arrival of the Red Bumblebee" is a short instrumental track. This is a bit of a throwaway,

The album closed with another epic track, "Dawn", 16:22 minutes in duration. It is a splendid end to a superb album. It sounds rather like Riverside in places mainly in the interplay between bass, drums and keyboards. Some fine spacy keyboard playing comes in around the 8 minute mark. It is my second favourite track on the album, just beaten by the title track

Overhead have their own unique sound with a distinctive vocalist in Alex Keskitalo, you can't really say that they sound like any other band, apart from the Riverside influence on "Dawn". They represent one of best of the new generation of progressive rock bands which are forging their own sound rather than replicating the music of the 1970's.

It is a magnificant achivement from a young band. It is a shame that they have not been more prolific in the intervening years with only two more studio recordings added to their discography since "Metaepitome" was released. It probably merits 4.5 stars but since I can't award it that I will have to give it a five star rating.