When you sign on to do a recording project, you never know how it's all going to go. Some albums come together effortlessly. Some are more difficult. This was a case of the latter, though in the end it was no less rewarding, and perhaps more so.

This being the third album I've done for James' solo project (formerly called Mullmuzzler), we all knew the drill. None of us live even remotely close to each other (James is in Ontario, Mike's in Boston, Matt's in San Francisco, I'm in LA, and Marco's from Italy), so we do our tracks, essentially self-produce them (with guidance from James ahead of time), and fly them to each other. The two previous albums were made this way and it was remarkably effortless. The material for this album was decidedly heavier, and I really liked that. So we launched…and to make a long story very short, due to a cavalcade of technical and communication snafu's, I ended having to record the entire album twice.

I've never had to do that before, and hopefully I'll never have to do it again, but after listening to the final version of the album for the first time, it really was worth it. This is by far my favorite of the three LaBrie solo albums; it's not even close. The tunes and the production are so heavy, so much deeper, and more rocking. I may never do a real "nu-metal" album, nor would I want to, but this is close enough to the good stuff in that genre to get me off in a nu-metal kind of way. And I even got to satisfy my Metallica jones, though I won't spoil the surprise by telling you which track does that particular trick.

So, the moral of the story is, sometimes the most painful births are the most precious.