Songfacts®:

• This seven and a half minute epic finds Brandon Boyd singing about a long night of seclusion and a rite of passage. Guitarist Mike Einziger told Rock Sound magazine: "The verse started off as a simple chord progression and it set the tone of the whole record. We, as a band, have a history of over-complicating things, making them loud and wanting them to rock hard. With 'In the Company of Wolves' we decided to go in a completely different direction; we thought: 'what can we do to turn it into something different, but effective?' It's hard to explain, but I think it works well, and it's really different for us. It might not be obvious to fans, or to people checking us out for the first time, but it's an important song to us."