The third song in Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy's "Twelve-step Suite," this song covers steps 6 and 7 in the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program. In 2010, Portnoy told Songfacts how alcoholism almost killed him: "If you listen to all five of these songs, there's so much stuff that I wrote about that's taken directly out of AA meetings, or taken directly out of the Big Book (the Alcoholics Anonymous guidebook). That was a big part of what was behind the songs, and what's behind me still being alive today. It's all about bettering yourself and it's not only a program of learning to be sober, it's a program of learning to live to be a better human being. That's why it's been a huge, huge help and a big part of my life for the last 10 years."
The intro is inspired by the beginning of "Welcome To The Machine" by Pink Floyd.
This is the opening track on Dream Theater's eighth album, Octavarium. Running 8:25, it's typical of their complex, heavy, progressive metal sound. The album was the group's last for Atlantic Records, which found other priorities as Dream Theater's sales declined. Their next album, Systematic Chaos, was issued on the smaller Roadrunner label.
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