(2003) as a heavy, "balls to the wall" album. Though Portnoy had some preconceived ideas for Systematic Chaos, he decided not to tell the rest of the band; leaving them to start with a "completely open palate". However, Portnoy did want to retain a "cutting, aggressive, modern" mood throughout, "It had to have balls," he added, "it had to be cool". The album was titled Systematic Chaos after Portnoy and Petrucci picked phrases from song lyrics that they felt would be a fitting title, in similar fashion to previous albums like Images and Words (1992) or Awake (1994). The pair selected the word "chaos", which appears in "The Dark Eternal Night". Petrucci and Portnoy were also attracted to the phrase "Random thoughts of neat disorder" which appears in "Constant Motion". Opposites of the word "chaos" were discussed, resulting in the word "systematic". Portnoy said that in addition to the album, "systematic chaos" is also a "fitting description of the band in general". Songs John Petrucci wrote the lyrics for five of the eight songs on the album, telling a fictional story through each one. In the Presence of Enemies The first piece recorded, the twenty-five-minute epic "In the Presence of Enemies," was described by Petrucci as the "epitome of a Dream Theater creation". He went on to describe the composition as "very progressive, very long"; also noting that it set a good tone for writing and recording the rest of the album. Their longest recording since "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", it was split into two parts, due to it having a good open and close for the album at the same time. According to Portnoy, the band felt it was too long to open the album, but did not want to close the album with a long song, as they had with the twenty-four-minute title track of their last album Octavarium (2005). The songs are normally played together in their entirety in live shows. During recording, the work was titled, "The Pumpkin King," and in the album's booklet, the song is given a subtitle, "The Heretic and the Dark Master." The story of "In the Presence of Enemies" was inspired by a Korean manhwa named Priest, as Petrucci explains that not being a manga fan, precisely, "[...] I like it though. This one, I just stumbled upon and I really liked the content. It inspired me to take a