“To me, it's one of the most technical songs on the album. It has a lot of twists and turns and some crazy ideas that were confusing to us as we were writing and recording. It took a while to get it all under our fingers.

“Guitar-wise, it’s the one song where I tune down to D. I thought it would sound heavier that way. And it does – I think the song kicks some serious ass!

“One of the things that was a lot of fun to do is this diminished passage of unison playing. I wrote it out and built it piece by piece, programming drums as I went. I showed it to Jordan, who said, ‘That’s crazy!’ He learned it and put a harmony to it.

“We played it for some of the people from Roadrunner who came by as we were recording, and they went crazy. One of them remarked that the diminished section was like being tickled – that feeling you get where you’re saying, ‘Stop, stop!’ but somebody keeps tickling you anyway. So we started referring to that part as ‘The Tickle Section.’

“The mood of the song always reminded me of an old-time epic film like Ben- Hur. So I wrote lyrics that are somewhat historical about this ancient Persian elite fighting force that kind of died out. Again, a good example of my love for storytelling and linking music to words.”