Matheos spent seven months writing material for the album. He then sent Kevin Moore (who was living in Costa Rica) some MP3 files of the music he had written and asked him to write some keyboard parts. Moore (known as a founding member of Dream Theater and for his solo career as Chroma Key) had previously performed on three Fates Warning albums, and Matheos was expecting him to write keyboard parts as he had for the Fates Warning album. Instead, Moore "messed with [Matheos'] tracks and switched things around and put vocals to it and stuff like that." He said that he no longer considered the keyboard, bass and guitar parts separate from each other: "I don't write like that any more as much as I'm composing a whole song." The resulting track would become "Hello, Helicopter!"