John Petrucci, James LaBrie interview

John Petrucci: We had an approach recording this record differently from the previous two in that we had to write it in a specific period of time, although we had pieces of music and ideas left over from touring that we'd written in between legs. We literally in about a three month period had to sit down and write a record, whereas before, it was spread out over actually years a couple of times, and we did that in order to really follow through with a schedule that would get the record out when we wanted, to enable us to use the producers we wanted to do in the studio and whatnot. But it ended up working out – that little bit of pressure really made us work hard.

James LaBrie: We definitely approached this album with more aggression and that's quite obvious as soon as you put it on – it's a heavier sounding album with a bit of a dark side to it. so when we I mean we were all feeling that even before the writing process began we were all sitting around going, “We gotta make this album really heavy sounding.” John, Kevin and whoever else in the band was always constantly working on their sounds, so that that would come across. We approached this album with definitely more aggression.

JP: There were also like conscious instrumentation and writing style changes. John moved on to a six-string bass which subsequently resulted in me moving on to a seven-string guitar, so there's a lot lower range and that's why some of the songs are really heavy. We also had some definite ideas as to form, like we wanted to put a trilogy on the record, which we did. We wanted a couple songs to not have involved orchestration and just sort of be the same mood throughout, which we did on a few... Some of them just happened naturally and other ones were preconceived.

Kevin Moore left the band. We just recently discovered that. [laughs] He told us right towards the end of the recording. He's been in the band since the beginning and I’ve known him way before that – we've grown up together, all of us – and basically he wasn't happy doing what he was doing. He got to a point in his life and decided he didn't want to be there, and was writing a completely different style of music. We're sitting here talking about progressive, eclectic music and he was writing techno, industrial sort of stuff, way in a different direction, sort of unhappy on stage and whatnot. I mean we're really upset and everything, but in a sense you can't blame him. You don't want to live in a world where you're unhappy. But since then, we've continued – not to make light of it – but we've we have continued full speed ahead, and we did the video, the tour is lined up. We actually hired somebody that may or may not be in the band – we're kind of keeping that open. But we hired somebody that's really amazing in the meantime.

We're gonna be over here around February or March. I think it's gonna end up being beginning of February. We're gonna go to Japan the middle of January and do about eight to ten shows, so right after that we'll be over.