We're not the kind of band who writes an order abundance of songs and picks from them, we usually write for the album.

You're about to walk on stage and play together for the next few hours so you want to feel connected and make sure that everyone is in the same head space; a good head space.

Songs come alive every night and can be a new experience for someone. You might have someone in the audience who has never seen us before and hearing it for the first time. We are aware of that.

It's hard to answer that from my own perspective because when I'm playing I know where it is coming from and the sources.

We used to rehearse and that's where the roots of Dream Theater formed. Y'know, we used to play cover songs and jam to [Iron] Maiden and stuff but we were writing songs and it was this metal, loud style and we'd constantly get knocks on our door, because the rehearsal rooms were right next door to each other, and these jazz guys would be like, "Can you guys turn it down a little?"

You try to play the song better than you had before.

The style of music that we're playing, this progressive metal style, has always been an upstream battle for us. We don't usually get a lot of commercial exposure.