Panic Attack by Dream Theater

Everybody knows about Dream Theater’s astounding chops and its roots at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. But one of the band’s secret weapons is its lyrics, which go to complex areas to match the music.

Drummer Mike Portnoy has written an ongoing suite about his experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous; and “Constant Motion” (also an RB track) is about his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Not to be outdone, guitarist John Petrucci wrote the psychologically-themed “Panic Attack” which evokes, yep, a panic attack. This hails from Octavarium, one of the band’s most-admired albums, which included a dizzying number of references to the numbers five and eight. The fifth song on the album, “Panic Attack” is eight minutes long.

“Panic Attack” was one of the last songs to be recorded at New York’s famed studio, the Hit Factory.

You’ve gotta be kidding, or maybe we do. Some of our best playtesters had to be scraped off the floor after wrestling with this little ditty, which competes with “Painkiller” as the toughest song in the history of Rock Band. However, one of them did complete this song on Expert drums and guitar, so it can indeed be done.

While “Painkiller’ requires impossible stamina, this one is more about chops, with its bizarre time signatures and tempo shifts. However, the song does have a basic pattern that repeats throughout; if you can learn the structure you’ll be less broadsided. If you can master the main guitar riff, you can get enough Overdrive to cheat your way through the solo.

On drums, you can practice the main riff and survive most of the song—but we can’t help you when you’re hit by the dizzying string of kicks toward the end; unless you want to semi-cheat by hooking up a second bass pedal. Even Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy was amazed that we mapped his double-bass part to one drum.

Still going strong as of 2008.