Magic Fire Music : Hi Jaakko and Alex. I'm very happy to make this interview. I see you in Versailles last year and it was my best concert of 2007! It was a great moment. What memories do you keep of this concert?

Jaakko : Hello hello. Thanks and it was a great moment for us too! It was very nice to see and play in such a glorious environment. Everyone was very friendly and we also had some friends coming from Finland for the show, so it was a really nice evening.
Alex : Well.. my mother actually showed up backstage and caught me smoking, so that's something. Besides that, I remember driving under the De Gaulle airport runway, which was surreal enough, but nothing compared to the moment that I realised that I would probably have to address the king with a "your majesty" as we start the show... that guy really had the best seat in the whole theater. Oh, and I did manage to get lost several times
backstage, but that's probably my own fault.

Magic Fire Music : Alex, you are crazy on the scene. And Jaakko you are very calm. Are you the same in life?
Alex : In the Real World I have opted to hide my crazyness from the world, I tell myself that they would not understand, and despite this, I find I often need a translator with me to reiterate in plain language and in a more conformist form what just comes out of my mouth. A great way to lose friends and alienate people.
Jaakko : I am calm in life. On stage I usually let the steam out but maybe I was a bit calmer in Versailles
than usual.

Magic Fire Music : It was the first time you come play in France (with the Prog'sud Festival). What is the show that has the highest level of reception?
Jaakko : All our shows in France have been very well received. Both at Prog'Sud and Versailles the audience was seated, which we are not so used to. But they were very enthusiastic never the less and they were clearly digging the music so it was rewarding to play.
Alex : In all seriousness, my favourite show of all time was in Helsinki many years ago in a small underground music bar. We had played many gigs before that one, most of them much grander, but this one was special for one special reason. It was the first time everything just clicked and it all made sense, you know, this was the first time we could forget about the actual physical playing, and really concentrate on that strange phenomenon we witnessed happening between the band and the audience, via the music. And on that day we created something that never left us, and since then, we have been on a journey to an even deeper level still. Who knows, we could find it the very next time we play a show.

Magic Fire Music : At Versailles the place was very special, have you ever played in a theater before?
Alex : No, never. It was all very unforgettable.
Jaakko : Indeed.

Magic Fire Music : Say to me, one of you must promise me to return soon!!!
Alex : If the right people say "yes", we are so coming back.
Jaakko : We'll do some touring April, but unfortunately not in France this time. But sooner or later we'll play there again for sure.

Magic Fire Music : Can we speak a little of the last album? What is the meaning of "Metaepitome"?
Alex : There is in fact an actual meaning to the word Metaepitome, although it is not as apparent as it might seem at first. Meta means "inside of" or "descriptive" and epitome means "the essence of" or "the best possible example of" so added together it translates to "the essence of the thing that makes us us". So yes, it is an introspective introspective of sorts. I had to completely re-write the lyrics three times before it was ready, and the end result was a theme of a tipping point in life when for a brief moment, things happen very fast, and the world reveals itself for what it is, and then, as quickly as it had started, it disappears and you are left changed, but you are not sure how exactly, you remember seeing something very secret, but can't really recall what it was. We really tried to create that moment and capture it on a CD. Risky business. I say...

Magic Fire Music : It's an album very important for your career. That he changed something for you? In Finland, your reputation has she changed? What is your success in Finland now?
Jaakko : Metaepitome really opened doors for us and put us on the map. It caught peoples attention and eventually got us our first gigs aboard which resulted in more attention and more gigs and so forth. So this time everyone was already anxiously waiting for the new album, which shows in the sales figures even.
Alex : The album is actually rather hard to find over here, and people keep asking us "where can we buy it?", and with the whole situation with music shops and the internet, we have had to conclude that what we have achieved in Finland has been down to our live shows. And ever since 2005, they have been magic. People tell their friends, and they tell their friends, and pretty soon everyone who follows the prog scene was aware of us. After that the metalheads started showing up, and after them a small pack of rockers and popfans arrived. Right now we are noticing that people are telling us that the media is starting to notice. But we are a long way from being popular. We have no delusions about that.


So, now, your new album...

Magic Fire Music : "And We're Not Here After All". It seems it has some special Seventies sounds in its atmospheres. They can be heard above all in «A Method...», «...To The Madness» and in the brief masterpiece «The Sun» . Is it right? What is your link with the progressive-rock of the past?
Alex : Who knows... Well I don't know if this counts, but my uncle wrote lyrics for a Finnish prog group, "Tabula Rasa" back in the seventies. We actually recorded a version of their greatest hit, "Vuorellaistuja", for a compilation, What was it called Jaakko? But other than that, no real link.. it's up to the audience to make their own mind.
Jaakko : Yeah we recorded 'Vuorellaistuja' for an upcoming tribute to old Finnish prog called 'Tuonen tytär 2'. We like the old stuff, most of my favourite music was made in the seventies, but we don't try to sound too retro on purpose, it comes naturally for us.

Magic Fire Music : How do you feel the evolution of the band since 'Metaepitome'?
Alex : We were in the process of beaking in our new drummer when we recorded Metaepitome, and since then we have indeed progressed by leaps and bounds as far as our playing together as a band is concerned, and it is mostly down to Ville, he definitely was the last piece that completed the puzzle. So nowadays we play as a unit, and whatever happens at one end affects the other, so sometimes we start playing something and after a few minutes find ourselves playing something completely different. This makes all the difference when we play live.
Jaakko : Well said

Magic Fire Music : Is there concept in this one?
Alex : Oh, most definitely yes. On 'And We're Not Here After All' I really went all-out personal. 'A Captain On the Shore' for instance is about how to deal with the experience of isolation felt by individual human beings and about how odd it is that despite being stuck in these bodies of flesh, we somehow manage to communicate and develop social structures with relative ease. This song pretty much sums up what the whole album is about, and it even ends with the conclusion that "we're not here after all".

Magic Fire Music : What is your method to compose a song? It's different from other albums?
Alex : Not so much different, rather, more organic. We had noticed that songs from 'Metaepitome' took a life of their own very soon after recording them. So this time we tried to leave some time for this "curing" process to happen, and I think we allowed the music more freedom at an earlier stage than we did with previous records. And yes, I know what you are thinking, usually this approach leads to overly repeative, boring musicianship. But don't worry, we did a lot of painful scrutinizing, and left out lots of stuff, just to keep the big picture moving, or as I would say, progressing.

Magic Fire Music : Could you tell us some words about each track?
Jaakko : Well, 'A Method' was based on some chords that came to me one time when plucking my guitar on my couch and 'to The Madness' based on a jam that started on Janne's bass riff I think. It became a very interesting song and a bit different from what we had done before. 'Time Can Stay' is maybe a bit more like the older Overhead, or I don't know. It was one of the first songs to be written for the album anyway and we had played it live before recording the album. 'Lost Inside' is a great epic, I love its atmosphere, especially Alex's vocals. It's a long track and one of my favourites. It started as a jam between me, Tarmo and a guitarist friend of mine and the band made something special out of it. 'Entropy' is a faster tempo song that brings good kick for the album and a nice song to play live, we do some extended solos on it nowadays. 'A Captain On The Shore' is a great way to end the album. Calm and exiting and we had the pleasure of having our friend Petra Oksa to guest on vocals which really are the sugar on top.

Magic Fire Music : Your music is melancholic, energetic, fragile but strong too. There are a lot of contrasts in your music. This is not too difficult to compose such songs?
Jaakko : We like different kinds of atmospheres in music and we want our songs to be versatile and interesting. Those things really come rather naturally for us, we like contrasts.

Magic Fire Music : The album was recorded in two different sessions and «The Sun» is the transition. Why?
Jaakko : Well actually the drums were recorded in two sessions and the rest of the instruments in various sessions. This was to divide and ease the workload and on the hand to get a bit different kinds of atmospheres and approaches to different songs. 'The Sun' was pretty much put together on the fly when recording the guitars. It's based on varying 'to The Madness'-theme and it seemed to fit well as a kind of an intermission between moods.

Magic Fire Music : «A Method to the Madness» is the same title in two parts isn't it? Why and who had this idea?
Jaakko : Yes it is. The two parts of the song are different from each other, kind of like two sides of the same story maybe. We thought long whether to divide it into two tracks or not and in the end decided to put a track change there. Even though it doesn't look like one long track, which some people seem to like a lot, but that's what it basically is.

Magic Fire Music : What's in the near future for Overhead?
Jaakko : The future looks very interesting for us. The new album has been very well received and we have some good things coming. First we'll play some shows in Finland, one of them with The Flower Kings and a bit later on we'll head to Poland and in April for some touring in Mid-Europe. These and some other interesting news will be published a bit later on...

Magic Fire Music : Are you already working on the next album?
Jaakko : We have started jamming and coming up with new ideas. But it's a long way from anything ready, now the main focus is on touring and supporting 'And We're Not Here After All'.

Magic Fire Music : Do you have personal projects?
Jaakko : Alex and Ville also play in a ska/rock-band called Valvomo, which had a hit in Finland a while ago. Tarmo also plays in an other kind of rock-band called RobinCosmos, and I actually used to substitute their bass-player some time back. I'm happy just doing Overhead and sometimes some jam sessions with friends.

Magic Fire Music : Any last words for the readers, to conclude?
Jaakko : Thanks for reading this far, for the appriciation and hope to see you on a gig sometime! And Merry
Christmas to all :-)