Length Matters: The Peter Snell Experience – Life in the Controposhere

Welcome to another segment of Length Matters, a sort of prog dick measuring contest where we showcase the longest prog songs that come across our ears. This time, it’s from a band called The Peter Snell Experience, all the way from New-Zealand, and the piece of interest is called ‘Life in the Controposphere’, which was released in 2014.

Length Matters #6: Dream Theater – The Twelve-Step Suite

At 57 minutes, this song spans 5 parts on 5 different albums. Beginning with ‘The Glass Prison’ – which might incidentally be the best progressive metal song ever written – on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and ends with ‘The Shattered Fortress’ on Black Clouds & Silver Linings. Some people might add ‘The Mirror‘ from Awake as a sort of prelude to the suite, but is not officially part of it.

Length Matters #5: The Flower Kings – Garden of Dreams

This 59:25 long song from the legendary prog rock band The Flower Kings is from their fourth studio album, Garden of Dreams.

If you don’t know The Flower Kings, it’s the original band of Roine Stolt, from the Transatlantic supergroup. The band was in fact created to play his solo album The Flower King live, but then stayed together and became one of the most iconic prog act in modern history.

Length Matters #4 : The Tangent – Le Sacre du Travail

We already spoke about The Tangent before in our Progscure Chronicles, but now they appear in Length Matters because of their epic, 63-minute, 5-part song and album ‘Le Sacre du Travail’, or ‘The Rite of Work’ for you non-French people.

Length Matters #3: Leonardo – The Absolute Man

Today, we’re going to talk about Trent Gardner’s (Magellan) Leonardo – The Absolute Man! This 66-minute prog rock opera is split into 18 parts on the record, of various length. It’s a story based on Leonardo da Vinci’s life, hence the title. There are a lot of guest musicians in there, including the well-known James Labrie and Steve Walsh!

Length Matters #2: Vultress – Distance

Second installment of Length Matters! And this one is actually a Progscure Chronicles too!

We’re talking about Vultress‘ epic “Distance” suite. A heptalogy summing up to 76 minutes, with its longest subdivision being the almost-25-minutes “At The Edge”, which could be considered on its own one of the long prog songs out there.

Length Matters #1: Transatlantic – The Whirlwind

Let me introduce you to a new segment, called Length Matters. We’re going to talk about absurdly long songs, and why they’re great! As you know, one of the most striking attributes of prog music is the sheer length of their songs, often going beyond the 10 minute mark, or even 20 minute, with more extreme examples reaching 30, 40 minutes, and even more!

For the first one, I will take the longest song I have in my discography, and from there go in descending length. I hope you’ll find awesome songs and new bands to listen to in the process!