In a new interview with Dylan Gowan of Banger TV, DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy spoke about the band’s sixteenth studio album, “Parasomnia”, which came out on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks DREAM THEATER’s first release with Portnoy since 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”. When Gowan noted that “Parasomnia” comes across as one of the heavier albums in DREAM THEATER’s catalog, Portnoy concurred. “Yeah, I think sometimes people overlook the importance of the metal side to DREAM THEATER, especially with me in the band,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “It’s a really important aspect. It always has been. If you look at the very, very first song from the very first album ‘A Fortune In Lies’, I was playing thrash, double bass, thrash beats right outta the gate. And we’ve always had songs like that, whether it be ‘The Glass Prison’ or ‘Panic Attack’ or ‘A Nightmare To Remember’. It’s been a big part of the band’s sound, and, to be honest, I think it’s a big part of the band’s success.”He continued: “There’s a lot of prog bands or prog metal bands that are still kind of underground and still play smaller shows or maybe don’t sell as many records because maybe they haven’t tapped into the metal side. But the fact that the metal side is such a big, big part of our sound, I think is what elevates DREAM THEATER to be the cream of the crop in terms of ticket sales and record sales in the prog universe. I think it’s that metal side that does it. The fact that we could play these big metal festivals like Aftershock or Louder Than Life or Hellfest or Graspop [Metal Meeting], the fact that we could pull off gigs like that as a prog metal band speaks a lot for that metal side. And when writing ‘Parasomnia’, we just naturally fell into it. Maybe it was the dark subject matter of sleep disorders and nightmares and things like that, maybe that helped us gravitate towards it.”Portnoy added: “But, yeah, if I had to describe ‘Parasomnia’, the album, to somebody, I would say it kind of has the darkness and heaviness of ‘Train Of Thought’ with the cinematic approach of ‘[Metropolis Pt. 2:] Scenes From A Memory’.”Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with guitarist John Petrucci and bassist John 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.Mike Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy. Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.”Parasomnia” was produced by 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.In a recent interview with Japanese music critic and radio personality Masa Ito of TVK’s “Rock City”, Portnoy was asked what he has added to DREAM THEATER since he rejoined the progressive metal giants in October 2023 after a 13-year absence. He responded: “It is not really for me to say. I can’t sit here and pat myself on the back and kind of tell all the things I bring to the band. I think it’s more for the fans or the listener to kind of come up with that opinion. But I think it’s pretty well known what I bring to the band. It’s been this way since the beginning of the band 40 years ago.”Mike continued: “I was always contributing in every area — not just the drums, but collaborating on the music and the lyrics and the melodies and the production and the merchandise and the fan club and everything that goes into being in a band. I’m a very hands-on type of person, so for the first 25 years of the band, I oversaw all of that stuff. And then when I left the band, the guys had to kind of figure out how things were gonna get distributed amongst themselves. And however they decided that, that’s the way they continued without me. And now coming back in the band, I’ve had to be very, very respectful of what they’ve been doing all the years without me. It’s a very different organization than when I left in 2010.”When I left in 2010, I was a control freak. and overseeing everything and very protective of everything,” Portnoy added. “But now coming back, I need to respect that they’ve been touring for all these years without me and making records without me, so they have perhaps different ways of doing things. So, I had to come in very respectful and kind of tippy-toe my way around each area to see how much they wanted from me. There are some areas where they put complete control back into my lap. There’s other areas that maybe they wanted to retain some control and maybe ask me to take a step back. So, it’s been a learning process over the past year or so how the new chemistry was going to function. And it’s been very easy, I think. We’re all older and wiser at this stage of our lives. When I left the band in 2010, I was in my early 40s. Now I’m in my late 50s. And I think as you get older and you have more life experiences, you learn more, you learn how to behave in a more mutually beneficial way and try to be respectful of other people’s opinions and ideas. And that’s a lot of the stuff I learned all the years outside of DREAM THEATER. I did so many other bands and projects and albums, each one of which had a very different chemistry that I would have to adapt to. So I think adapting to all those different situations throughout the years really helped me to be more of a team player than maybe I was the first time around.”DREAM THEATER kicked off the North American leg of its 40th-anniversary tour on February 7 at The Met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The trek was “An Evening With Dream Theater” and was the first tour of North America since Portnoy’s return to the lineup, joining Petrucci, singer James LaBrie, Myung and keyboardist Jordan Rudess. The tour concluded on March 22 in New York City.[embedded content]
