And Petrucci says his fears about technology's long-term effect on the planet impacted the album's central concept. He tells the Huffington Post: "It's happening in all other areas - with jobs that people once held in manufacturing and everything else, they're automated now.

"There's already self-driving cars that they're experimenting with. Pretty soon, we'll be looking back, like, 'Oh, remember when you used to have to drive yourself?'

"Being a musician, and since music is such an important part of my life and people that surround me, I knew that music had to be a central theme. That with all the advances in technology, how music becomes less and less important and just really easy to stream and quickly listen to a song and make something up on your phone.

"As the importance kind of went away, I thought it would be really crazy and a travesty if people didn't make music or didn't participate in the arts anymore and it was all artificial - it was all done by machines.