The Brandalz

History

 Inspired by the audience response to Dream Theater's heavier songs while on tour, Train of Thought is widely considered their heaviest album to date. The album was written in three weeks. It was engineered by Doug Oberkircher and mixed by Kevin Shirley. The album has seven songs, while its predecessor (Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence) has six and its successor (Octavarium) has eight. The song pattern then reverses for the next two albums; Systematic Chaos has seven songs (counting both parts of "In the Presence of Enemies" as one) , and Black Clouds & Silver Linings has six. This carries out the theme of Octavarium, which states that everything ends where it began.

Reception

Songs

• The first song "As I Am" starts with the ending synth/orchestral chord of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence.
• Some lyrics of As I Am were inspired by Dream Theater's 2003 summer tour with Queensryche, described by Mike Portnoy as an "irksome series of shows." According to Portnoy, Queensryche guitarist Mike Stone tried giving John Petrucci tips on playing guitar, leading Petrucci to write the lyrics: "Don't tell me what's in, tell me how to write".
• "This Dying Soul" continues Mike Portnoy's Twelve-step Suite, started with "The Glass Prison" on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and later continued with "The Root of All Evil" on Octavarium, "Repentance" on Systematic Chaos, ending with " The Shattered Fortress" on "Black Clouds & Silver Linings". These songs share some of the lyrics and melodies.
• "Honor Thy Father" was written about Mike Portnoy's stepfather. When asked about what inspired him to write that song, he stated in an IRC chat: "I'm not very good at writing love songs, so I decided to write a HATE song!!!"
• Some of the mumbles during "Honor Thy Father" are taken from Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, in the scene when Jason Robards' character is talking to Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, explaining him about his regrets in life. There are also parts taken from the movie At Close Range in which a scene of Sean Penn and Christopher Walken's characters can be heard arguing.
• The lyrics to Vacant were inspired by James LaBrie's daughter, who fell into a short coma after suffering a sudden, unexplained seizure three days before her seventh birthday.
• Stream of Consciousness is the longest Dream Theater instrumental to date (not counting live mash-ups such as Instrumedley and "When The Water Breaks" from Liquid Tension Experiment II).
• In the Train of Thought Instrumental Bootleg release you can hear at the end of Stream of Consciousness that there is a baseball match on the TV in the background behind Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci delibrating whether that take was better than the previous one.
• Between 5:51 and 6:07 of the song "In the Name of God", there was a hidden composition buried beneath the far louder sounds of the song itself which lay undiscovered for over a year and a half. The band did not tell anyone that a hidden "nugget" (as it became known amongst Dream Theater fans) was present in the song, and only when Mike Portnoy mentioned it in his Mike Portnoy: Live at Budokan Drum-Cam DVD over a year later did someone find it. The Mike Portnoy message board was rife with fans scouring the song looking for what it might be, until a fan going by the pseudonymous name "DarrylRevok" mentioned that from 05:51 to 06:07 there appeared to be morse code audible, which Nick Bogovich (user handle "Bogie") isolated and discovered that when translated to English, the phrase "eat my ass and balls" (a Mike Portnoy catchphrase) was the result.
• From 12:56 onwards of "In the Name of God", the American civil war hymn "Battle Hymn of the Republic" can be heard in the right channel.
• "In The Name of God" has 14 letters in its title and is 14:14 in length. 14 is also double the number of the album as well as the number of songs. In addition, "Train of Thought" is 14 letters long.
• Jordan Rudess played the final note in the album (heard at 14:08 of "In the Name of God") with his nose as shown in "Making The Train of Thought" documentary. Mike Portnoy approved the take while he was filming. This is also the first note of Octavarium's first song, "The Root of All Evil" and the last note of the last song, "Octavarium" (heard at 23:29).
• As I Am and Honor Thy Father are the only Dream Theater songs recorded to use the word "fuck".

1. As I Am
2. This Dying Soul
3. Endless Sacrifice
4. Honor Thy Father
5. Vacant
6. Stream Of Consciousness
7. In The Name Of God