Lyrically, a thread of betrayal runs through Alter Bridge's Fortress album, with several songs dealing with the fall of institutions, such as this epic title track. Vocalist and lyricist Myles Kennedy explained to Kerrrang! magazine: "I'd become fascinated with the idea that, as humans, we have these totems or things that seem invincible. A lot of the time, that's a false sense of security. So much of what we think is everlasting or permanent is not. It's gonna fall, given enough time. Whether that be governments, religions or relationships, or whatever."

The album cover art was created by Dan Termonti, brother of guitarist Mark.

Guitarist Mark Tremonti told MusicRadar.com the story of the song: "This is one of the first ideas that I brought to Myles music-wise," he said. "I sent him the verse and the chorus, and we kind of forgot about it after that. We came back to it after Elvis (Baskette, producer) said, 'Let me hear some of the other ideas you two worked on before we started.' This one stuck out, and Elvis said, 'Hey, that's great. Let's work on it.'"

"As soon as the rhythm for the bridge came together, we all fell in love with it," he continued. "Then it was a matter of getting in and out of the time signature and making all of the parts work."

Mark Tremonti's solo follows an unusual chord progression. He told I Heart Guitar Blog: "The challenge with that song is it's in an open D5 tuning, so you don't have your pentatonic scales to know your way around. You have to completely reinvent the guitar when you're writing those solos. And to me I welcome it because if you write too many solos with your standard tunings you might start repeating yourself. When you tune it all different and try to land on your feet it's a whole different ballgame. It gives you some unique qualities to your solo."