How did FII, TOT and SC get their names?

[Elite]

Basically what's in the title.
Why did Dream Theater name these albums Falling Into Infinity, Train of Thought and Systematic Chaos? I can see where the other album titles came from, but I've always wondered about these.

[The Letter M]

MP.com FAQ regarding FII's title - https://mikeportnoy.com/aboutmike/faq/answers/31.aspx#342

MP: Having sat with "Stream of Consciousness" (the original title) for a whole year, it gave everyone a chance to second guess themselves. John Petrucci and myself still wanted to call it Stream of Consciousness, but the other guys were starting to think it was too pompous. So we had to rethink an album title, and we did the usual method of going through all the lyrics, but nothing really knocked us out. This was the first time that an album title didn't stem from any of the lyrics. We actually toyed with the idea of just calling it "Dream Theater" because of the many changes and different approach, but we figured that was a cop-out. Actually John P brought in the idea "Falling Into Infinity" and we all liked it.

AFAIK, TOT got it's title from being a relative-phrase to "Stream of Consciousness".

And as for Systematic Chaos, it stems from two lyrics - In "The Dark Eternal Night", "chaos" is sung, and "Systematic" comes from "Constant Motion", which is about MP's OCD, so things have to be systematic or in order. The band (or rather I believe MP and/or JP) thought the idea of "Systematic Chaos" was neat in that it was kind of ironic but also something that describes the band and it's music - it's all over the place but also has a meaning and has some sort of order.

-Marc.

[TheGreatPretender]

More specifically, they mentioned in the SC DVD that the word they used from Dark Eternal Night was "Chaos," and then in order to complement that, the phrase from Constant Motion was, "Random thoughts of neat disorder" so they took that idea, and chose Systematic as the antonym for Chaos.

[The Letter M]

More specifically, they mentioned in the SC DVD that the word they used from Dark Eternal Night was "Chaos," and then in order to complement that, the phrase from Constant Motion was, "Random thoughts of neat disorder" so they took that idea, and chose Systematic as the antonym for Chaos.

And as for Systematic Chaos, it stems from two lyrics - In "The Dark Eternal Night", "chaos" is sung, and "Systematic" comes from "Constant Motion", which is about MP's OCD, so things have to be systematic or in order. The band (or rather I believe MP and/or JP) thought the idea of "Systematic Chaos" was neat in that it was kind of ironic but also something that describes the band and it's music - it's all over the place but also has a meaning and has some sort of order.

-Marc.

Uhm... I said that?  Although I'll be clear that "systematic" isn't IN the lyrics to CM, but the idea behind it stems from CM.

-Marc.

[TheGreatPretender]

Uhm... I said that?  Although I'll be clear that "systematic" isn't IN the lyrics to CM, but the idea behind it stems from CM.

-Marc.

Yes, you did. I was just getting even more specific.

[The Letter M]

Uhm... I said that?  Although I'll be clear that "systematic" isn't IN the lyrics to CM, but the idea behind it stems from CM.

-Marc.

Yes, you did. I was just getting even more specific.

Gotcha 

I think these album titles are some of their more interesting as they aren't simply lifted from song lyrics (WDADU, IAW, Awake, SFAM) or song titles (SDOIT, 8VM). Oddly enough, four of those albums are revered as some of their best, so maybe if they title DT12 after a song lyric, they'll hit one out of the ballpark?

Technically speaking, ADTOE was original BITS, which was a lyric in the originally-titled "The Shaman's Trance", so we almost got another album titled after lyrics.

-Marc.

[Elite]

I actually like the fact that they take a 'random' lyric out of a song and make that the song title. It's rather unique I think, better than naming it after one of the tracks (which is fine as well though).

[TheGreatPretender]

I actually like the fact that they take a 'random' lyric out of a song and make that the song title. It's rather unique I think, better than naming it after one of the tracks (which is fine as well though).

Yeah, I agree. Same with the album title. I mean, I remember listening to WDADU for the first time, and wondering like, "Where did they get that title from?" And then I heard it in the middle of a verse and I was like, "There it is!"

[The Letter M]

Well in the case of (and defense of) SDOIT and 8VM, their title tracks also refer to the over concept of their respective albums as well, especially since those albums have a certain number of tracks that are reflected in the title-track and album title (Six tracks in SDOIT and 8 tracks in 8VM), so it would be hard to title those albums after anything BUT their closing-epics, which also reflect the nature of their respective albums.

-Marc.

[Elite]

I actually like the fact that they take a 'random' lyric out of a song and make that the song title. It's rather unique I think, better than naming it after one of the tracks (which is fine as well though).

Yeah, I agree. Same with the album title. I mean, I remember listening to WDADU for the first time, and wondering like, "Where did they get that title from?" And then I heard it in the middle of a verse and I was like, "There it is!"

haha, I actually meant that, but the same goes for song titles.