Ovrfwrd Spotlight - Utopia Planitia

13 hours ago
1 min read

Greetings all, hoping this message finds you well!

Ovrfwrd has been adding classic tracks to the 2026 live setlists, and we are excited to share that includes the track, "Utopia Planitia", from the album "Fantasy Absent Reason", written by Chris Malmgren.

The inspiration for this song is 2-fold. Utopia Planitia is a vast, ice-rich plateau on the planet Mars. This geographic spectacle is the largest impact basin in the solar system, with a turbulent history, suggestive of lava flows and subterranean ice. Visitors to this spot include NASA's Viking 2 lander in 1976, as well as the Chinese Zhurong rover.

This also happens to be the primary construction facility for the fictional shipyards, which you may have noticed has been present in Star Trek lore. Upon release of "Fantasy Absent Reason", Captain Phil Merkel, the excellent radio host of "Captain Phil's Planet" on FM, is the ONLY person to pull that connection out of thin air, doing so during a radio interview with Ovrfwrd on the album release! Phil, you will always have a gold star for that!

Think of this amazing formation on Mars while experiencing this live version of "Utopia Planitia", from the live Ovrfwrd album, "Occupations of Uninhabited Space".

Utopia Planitia - Live (Occupations of Uninhabited Space)

~Ovrfwrd (Chris, Kyle, Rikki, and Mark)