In place of cheesy band photos, outer-space imagery and a single-page cover insert you'll find album artwork so unique and creative that you'd be forgiven for thinking you held a Sigur Ros album in your hands.

It must be seen to be fully appreciated, but the booklet uses translucent plastic sheets and various weights of black lettering to create an illusion of the band's logo appearing out of seemingly randomly-placed selections of text within the booklet's pages.

But this was not created by some experimental European artist, it was in fact crafted by the band's drummer, Andrew Knott. When a band puts such effort and care into the production of just the album's cover, you can imagine how much love went into producing the music contained within it.

And yes, the cover isn't the only great thing about this release; the music is, if anything, even more impressive than the album's artwork.

The opening track, "Eleven" (available for download from the band's website), starts innocently enough with an soft guitar sound and the pleasurable tones of Nick Storr's voice, before building towards an epic middle/end section which evokes memories of a Neal-era Spock's Beard. It is around this point that, while listening to the album for the first time, I knew I was hearing something special from a band that is going places.

"Back Home" continues the Neal Morse theme with a song that could easily fit on any of Neal's solo albums, and in fact probably overshadow most of his own work. It's a perfect example of the understated excellence of this album; keeping things simple, focusing on the songwriting and not getting caught up in complexity for complexity's sake. The song works as a relatively simple verse-chorus-verse composition with a few subtle additions here and there and a fantastic crescendo, but the band do not seem concerned with the usual "more notes = better music" approach of a lot of progressive rock bands.

However, when they do break out into full-blown progressive metal territory, they do it as well as any band in the world. "Tungsten Blues" is the best instrumental I've heard since Dream Theater's hey-day, and is one of my songs of the year.

"Can You Hear Me?" draws you in with its deep, emotional lyrics and before you know it you've forgotten about all your worldly troubles and have been taken to another world. "Great music takes you places" is an oft-heard saying, and there is no better example of that idea than "Can You Hear Me?", the focal point of the album.

But it's not over there, we still have a 30-minute suite to get through!

Taking up the final six tracks on the album, it runs through the whole gamut of styles exhibited on the album to that point, and strengthens the idea that these boys are some of the best songwriters in the country. The sing-along choruses, the odd-time breakdowns, the fantastic guitar solos, it's all there - tied up in one neat little package. Sampled dialogue from films and other sources are utilised to great effect throughout the suite, and the album ends with a lush fadeout followed by silence before fading back up to a crowd of people laughing and making weird noises - a strange way to end an album, sure, but it seems to fit with the fun-loving nature of the rest of the album. Perhaps they got the multiple-ending idea from TransAtlantic, who ended Bridge Across Forever a similar way.

The album's emphasis is most certainly on the songwriting, not the individual wanking abilities of any of the band members, so it lends itself well to repeat listenings. Each instrumentalist is clearly a master of his chosen instrument, it's just that they have - thankfully - held back when the song demanded it and not let their egos get in the way of a great composition. It's refreshing to hear such high quality music coming out of a rather stale scene, and a bonus that the ones producing it are Australians.

This is world-class music produced in our own backyard, and I for one am proud to be an Aussie when I hear music like this coming from my countrymen. Mike Mills, guitarist for Melbourne prog band Template, said of The Third Ending: "the finest Australian progressive rock band. Ever." While I think Mike's own band might put up a bit of a fight for that title, it's hard to disagree with him.