Dream Theater Communicate Mike Portnoy Reunion on New Album ‘Parasomnia’

Dream Theater‘s new Parasomnia is titled after a selected class of sleep issues. Nevertheless it’s additionally an album that’s made desires come true for fanatics of the 40-year-old innovative steel quintet.

Parasomnia marks the recording go back of drummer and co-founder Mike Portnoy to the band’s ranks for the primary time since 2009’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings. It reunites him with guitarist (and album manufacturer) John Petrucci and bassist John Myung, who began Dream Theater as Majesty in 1985, after assembly on the Berklee School of Song in Boston. Vocalist James LaBrie got here on board in 1991, whilst Jordan Rudess joined in 1999.

That quintet launched six studio albums previous to Portnoy’s departure, and Petrucci recognizes to Billboard that “we absolutely perceive the gravity of Mike coming again and us being in combination once more.”

From Portnoy’s point of view, “As Dorothy as soon as stated (in The Wizard of Oz.), there’s no position like house. It’s no longer the unique lineup, however it’s the ‘vintage’ lineup. I feel the technology this band made albums, mainly ’99 via 2009, that was once in a large number of techniques the golden age of this band and…a musical blueprint this is one of these large a part of Dream Theater’s historical past. For this actual lineup to be reunited, it’s truly particular.”

Whilst Portnoy recognizes that “some fences needed to be mended” from his departure, he and Petrucci labored in combination at the latter’s 2020 solo album, Terminal Pace, and toured in combination; the 2 joined Rudess and bassist Tony Levin for a 3rd studio album as Liquid Pressure Experiment in 2021. However, Petrucci says, “the ones weren’t supposed as any indication that (Portnoy) could be returning. Mike Mangini [Portnoy’s replacement] was once very robust within the band…even supposing he couldn’t break out the ‘When’s Portnoy coming again?’ query that was once repeatedly requested. We had simply come off our first Grammy win [best metal performance in 2022 for “The Alien”] and the entirety was once going nice with traveling.

“For no matter reason why the celebrities aligned in that second, within the fall of 2023. We did remember that making the announcement that no longer most effective was once (Portnoy) coming again, however that we’d be going into the studio once more, the thrill could be loopy — for us, too. I feel you’ll listen it at the album.”

The eight-track, 71-minute set — out Friday (Feb. 7) and recorded at Dream Theater’s DTHQ studio on Lengthy Island — is the band’s sixteenth total, and the follow-up to 2021’s A View From the Most sensible of the International, which debuted at within the most sensible 10 of Billboard‘s Most sensible Onerous Rock Albums, Most sensible Rock Albums and Unbiased Albums charts. With its intricate preparations, explosive dynamics, virtuosic enjoying and long-form compositions (six songs are over seven mins and a last epic, “The Shadow Guy Incident,” clocks in at a heady 19:32), Parasomnia is the entirety Dream Theater envelopes whilst sounding decidedly present-day.

“I sought after it to sound fashionable but in addition vintage,” Petrucci explains. “Probably the most albums made between 1999 and 2009 or so, that’s a duration that’s so loved by means of our fanatics. So having Mike rejoin, I feel there’s hope for a few of that nostalgia coming again — and it just about did. You’ll be able to listen it at the album. It undoubtedly has that vibe. However as a manufacturer I’m stepping into in need of to make an album that sounds higher than the rest we’ve executed sooner than. So that you attempt to push the envelope with techniques of recording. It’s a mix of the use of fashionable tactics however the use of antique audio apparatus to do it and mash the ones up in a great manner. And naturally the use of nice team of workers — Jimmy T (Meslin) our engineer, Andy Sneap, Mark Gittins — those guys are serving to to carry it into the longer term, into a contemporary sound. It’s a great stability of previous and new.”

Petrucci says Parasomnia‘s idea isn’t in response to any real-life dozing issues inside the band. He first heard the time period a couple of years in the past and “stored it in my again pocket. I like the sound of that phrase. I like the tie-in to desires and Dream Theater, and I liked that the subject material might be so creepy and darkish and heavy.” He researched the quite a lot of parasomnias — together with sleepwalking, night time terrors and night time paralysis — and used them as the foundation for songs; one, “Lifeless Asleep,” was once even drawn from a real tale a few guy who by chance strangled his spouse in mattress whilst dreaming that he was once combating a house intruder.

The suite-like “The Shadow Guy Incident,” in the meantime, is in response to a pre-waking phenomenon of feeling the presence of “demons or darkish figures,” in keeping with Petrucci.

“This can be a thematic, idea album,” he recognizes, “so there are some Easter eggs all over, (musical) subject matters that repeat themselves that I feel hardcore fanatics will pick out up on. We like doing stuff like that. I feel it takes the album to every other degree. It makes it extra epic, extra vintage, extra particular. And it’s such a lot a laugh.”

Portnoy, in the meantime, takes credit score for pushing Dream Theater within the conceptual course on Parasomnia. “It’s such crucial album for us that I believed it had to be one thing greater than only a selection of songs,” he says. “That’s once we began growing the album, pondering of it in the case of one piece of labor that you simply digest from begin to end, like gazing a film or studying a guide. When we made up our minds to head in that course it truly opened the doorways to make this an excessively particular album.”

Dream Theater preceded Parasomnia‘s unencumber with the tracks “Night time Terror,” “A Damaged Guy” and “Nighttime Messiah,” in conjunction with accompanying movies. The band returns to the street on unencumber day in Philadelphia, with dates recently introduced via a sold-out March 22 forestall at Radio Town Song Corridor in New York Town. Petrucci says the trek will characteristic a few songs from the brand new album however is most commonly designed to proceed a party of Dream Theater’s fortieth anniversary — which started ultimate yr, out of the country — with a extra Parasomnia-centric excursion deliberate for later this yr. Portnoy provides that Dream Theater hopes to play the brand new album in its entirety at the moment.

“It’s beautiful fantastic I’m nonetheless in the similar band with a man I met when I used to be 12, in heart college, and a man I met when I used to be 18, simply beginning at school,” Petrucci notes. “All of us love doing it. We’re pushed. We like enjoying our tools, we like writing tune in combination, recording tune in combination, we like traveling in combination. The chemistry and brotherhood we now have as other folks is simply so robust. And on most sensible of that could be a fan base that’s global and well-liked and constant and devoted and faithful. We don’t take that as a right.

“No longer each band survives, proper? Bands get a divorce, individuals go away. We understand how fortunate we’re to have a 40-year profession and {that a} member can go away and are available again and rejoin with such happiness and pleasure round it. That’s a testomony to everyone’s love for doing it, and love for every different.”