Prayer

The first single from Believe, "Prayer" is a conversation between lead singer David Draiman and God after the death of his grandfather.

Draiman's decision to become a heavy metal singer was an unforgivable sin in the eyes of his grandfather, an orthodox Jew, who severed all ties with him - until the elderly man was faced with his own mortality. "As his health began to wane and as he felt his mortality creeping up on him, I was allowed in some sense to kind of come back into the picture on a less significant level," Draiman told MTV News in 2002. "And that very adversely affected me. I was actually on Ozzfest when I first got the phone call that he was on his deathbed and only had about 24 to 48 hours to live, and he was in Israel so I couldn't be with him. I was backstage at the time, and Marilyn Manson saw me coming out of the room, and he asked me if I was alright. I explained to him what happened, and it was the first time I had ever seen an actual look of remorse on his face. No one could look at the aura I projected over the course of that next week and not feel my pain and those feelings very definitely will present themselves on the record."

The song was also inspired by Draiman's disgust with the actions of prominent clergymen in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "Instead of consoling their flock, people like Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts chastised them and used the situation as a means of empowerment, saying it was our own fault because we're a decadent and promiscuous people. I just thought that whole notion is ridiculous," he told MTV News. "It's not very godly for a God to inflict pain and suffering on his people to elicit a response. I would hope that God wouldn't be that petty. But if that's what is happening and you're inflicting pain and suffering to get me to return [to the flock], bring it on. There's nothing that you're going to do to me that's going to change my conviction or change my path."