Alien is the fourth studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on March 22, 2005. The album was written by Devin Townsend and Gene Hoglan over a six-month time period. The album reached No. 32 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and No. 35 on the Top Independent Albums chart. Background Townsend was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 1998, a condition that was unknowingly exacerbated by his alcohol and drug use at the time. To compensate, he was prescribed anti-psychotic medication, but by the time of the writing and recording of Alien, he began expressing doubt about the initial diagnosis, and decided to stop taking the medication, but continued with his substance abuse, and he eventually "flipped out" during the process, and called the resulting album "toxic" and "psychologically very unhealthy". Townsend and Hoglan were the primary writers of the album, since Simon and Stroud were busy with other commitments. Townsend has stated that the easiest track to record for the album was "Zen", and the most difficult track to record, "Skeksis", was also his favourite. The making of Alien was documented and made viewable online on Century Media's official site in February 2005. It was also available as a bonus DVD of the limited first edition of the album. The band recorded a cover of Tom Jones's "What's New Pussycat?" that was scheduled to appear on Alien, but it was not recorded entirely because "it did not fit the flow" of the album. The song is not expected to be released anytime, even though Blabbermouth.net has reported so. Due to some kind of error, the unmastered promotional release of Alien (and subsequently the early leaks of the album on the internet) contained the longer version of "Love?" and a version of "We Ride" which had most of the guitar solos missing. Also, on this promo release the track "Thalamus" was credited as being called "Landscape". Previous to the promotional release, press releases credited "Thalamus" as being called "Mega Bulldozer". The voice heard during the intro to the song "Two Weeks" belongs to a British mathematician Andrew Wiles. Wiles was interviewed for an episode of the BBC documentary series Horizon that focused on Fermat's Last Theorem. Song information "Love?" "Love?" was chosen as the sole single from the album. Townsend has stated that the chorus was "ripped off" from the song "City of Love" by