The song stops so suddenly on my album? Do I have a misprint? Should I ask for a refund?
The song intentionally cuts off like that, because part of the song deals with how sudden death can be. The sudden ending of the song is just like an unexpected death of a person.
Another explanation is that it was inspired by The Beatles’ Abbey Road side A ending, and MP explains that the melodies are building up and it just “pulls the carpet out from under you”. When asked about the abrupt ending while at a drum clinic in Atlanta in 1999, Mike Portnoy explained “We had all this tension, and it just kept building and building, and we had no idea where to take it, you know? So we decided to just pull the plug on it, like The Beatles did with She’s So Heavy.”
The song’s abrupt ending was modified in their Greatest Hit compilation.
