DREAM THEATER’s JAMES LABRIE Says Reunion With MIKE PORTNOY Was ‘Very Natural’: ‘It Was Very Smooth, Seamless’

In a new interview with This Day In Metal, DREAM THEATER singer James LaBrie discussed the band’s decision to reunite with Mike Portnoy in October 2023, 13 years after the drummer first left the progressive metal titans. Asked if it’s fair to say that his face-to-face meeting with Portnoy in March 2022 “was maybe one of the last dominoes to fall before the classic DREAM THEATER lineup reunited”, James said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Yeah, for sure. When Mike and I met — you’re referring to our initial meeting at the Beacon Theatre [in New York City] when we were playing there and he came out to the show. But, yeah, that was somewhat the catalyst that really kind of busted the door wide open with the possibility that we could all start really thinking about. Is this something that we should be seriously considering, a reunion? And things inevitably did lead to that, but I think there were some precursors, like Mike had already done [DREAM THEATER guitarist] John Petrucci’s solo album, then he did his solo tour, then he also worked with John and Jordan [Rudess, DREAM THEATER keyboardist] on the latest LIQUID TENSION [EXPERIMENT] album. So all these things were kind of just slowly but surely ensuring that he was walking through the door of being back in the fold.”James continued: “[Mike] coming back in, though, when it actually did happen, it was very natural. There was no — I don’t know — feelings of whether or not, ‘Hey, is this really gonna work? Is this gonna be what we remember the band as?’ And if there were any apprehensive feelings, that just definitely was never a part of it. To be quite honest with you, I joke around, in some of the interviews I’ve said it felt like Mike went out for a coffee and he came back and we just started writing. But it was very smooth, seamless. And we were joking a few times, saying stuff like, ‘Oh my God…’ Because once you actually get into that environment and you start writing the album, you start remembering the chemistry that was almost palpable. And it was within the first day or two days of starting to write [the upcoming DREAM THEATER album] ‘Parasomnia’, we were joking around, we were laughing, it was, like, ‘Oh my god. I remember that, that whole interaction, that whole analytical approach to the songs and how they slowly but surely evolve into a complete composition.’ So it was all this familiarity going on, going, ‘Oh my god. That’s exactly the way it used to be. This is where we are today, but it doesn’t seem that we’ve missed a step.’ So it was extremely effortless, so to speak. It was just doing what we know how to do when the five of us get into the studio.”The progressive metal legends played their first concert with Portnoy in 14 years on October 20 at the O2 Arena in London, United Kingdom.The drummer co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with Petrucci and Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989’s “When Dream And Day Unite” through 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”, before exiting the group in 2010. Portnoy returned to DREAM THEATER in October 2023 after being replaced by Mike Mangini, who played with DREAM THEATER across five studio albums and accompanying world tours.London marked the kick-off concert of DREAM THEATER’s 2024-2025 40th-anniversary tour. The European leg of the trek — presented as “An Evening With Dream Theater” — ran through November 24 in Amsterdam, hitting cities in numerous countries along the way.Portnoy told “Coffee With Ola” about how it feels to be back in DREAM THEATER after a 13-year absence: “It feels great. I mean, it’s funny because for the whole world, they’re just starting to see the reunion now, but we’ve been together for a year behind the scenes. So it’s been over a year for us behind the scenes and making the new record, but it’s only now in the past couple weeks since the [40th-anniversary European] tour began and since the first music video [from the upcoming DREAM THEATER album] came out that people are actually seeing us back together again. But for us, it’s, like, it’s old news… It is exciting, though. And you could feel the excitement and the love and the emotions at every show. And every night James welcomes me back on from stage. And it’s been overwhelming, the amount of love and everybody being so welcoming back and everything.”DREAM THEATER’s sixteenth studio album, “Parasomnia”, is due on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks the band’s first release with Portnoy since 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”.Regarding what it felt like to be writing and recording with DREAM THEATER again, Portnoy said: “To be back with these guys, it feels really special. It feels like family, really, honestly. John and me and DREAM THEATER bassist] John Myung have been playing together almost 40 years at this point. We formed the band when we were teenagers and met at college, the first month of college. So, for us, it’s deeper than just being in a band together. We’ve been through life together. We met our wives together, our wives played in a band together, we ad our families at the same time, we’ve been to the funerals of each other’s parents and siblings and things like that. So, we’ve been through all these life experiences together. It goes beyond just the music for us. All that being said, it also, at least to me, felt like no time had passed. It did not feel like 13 years. Once we started writing together, it felt so natural and so fresh. ‘Night Terror’ was the first thing we worked on, and it just came out so naturally. There wasn’t much thought needed to go into it. It was, like, ‘Okay, here we are where we just left off.'””Parasomnia” was produced by John Petrucci, engineered by James “Jimmy T” Meslin, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme returns once again to lend his creative vision to the cover art.[embedded content]