So by length standards, Voices, Home, Learning to Live, Metropolis, or any other song that is highly praised by fans under 15min are all not epics because they aren't 15+ minutes long? But by length standards, say, ITPOE is? ITPOE is a great song (counting both parts) but I wouldn't call it epic, per se.
I think that a song can be epic and be 5 minutes long. So far, Beneath The Surface sounds pretty epic to me and it's only about 5 minutes long. It shouldn't be about how many minutes is in a song, it should be about how much goodness is in the minutes. ANTR sounds like a mess if you ask me but it's automatically an epic because of it's length? Wtf?