Dream Theater‘s new Parasomnia is titled after a specific category of sleep disorders. But it’s also an album that’s made dreams come true for fans of the 40-year-old progressive metal quintet.
Parasomnia marks the recording return of drummer and co-founder Mike Portnoy to the band’s ranks for the first time since 2009’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings. It reunites him with guitarist (and album producer) John Petrucci and bassist John Myung, who started Dream Theater as Majesty in 1985, after meeting at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Vocalist James LaBrie came on board in 1991, while Jordan Rudess joined in 1999.
That quintet released six studio albums prior to Portnoy’s departure, and Petrucci acknowledges to Billboard that “we fully understand the gravity of Mike coming back and us being together again.”
From Portnoy’s perspective, “As Dorothy once said (in The Wizard of Oz), there’s no place like home. It’s not the original lineup, but it is the ‘classic’ lineup. I think the era this band made albums, basically ’99 through 2009, that was in a lot of ways the golden age of this band and…a musical blueprint that is such a big part of Dream Theater’s history. For this particular lineup to be reunited, it’s really special.”
While Portnoy acknowledges that “some fences had to be mended” from his departure, he and Petrucci worked together on the latter’s 2020 solo album, Terminal Velocity, and toured together; the two joined Rudess and bassist Tony Levin for a third studio album as Liquid Tension Experiment in 2021. But, Petrucci says, “those weren’t intended as any indication that (Portnoy) might be returning. Mike Mangini [Portnoy’s replacement] was very strong in the band…even if he couldn’t escape the ‘When’s Portnoy coming back?’ question that was constantly asked. We had just come off our first Grammy win [best metal performance in 2022 for “The Alien”] and everything was going great with touring.
“For whatever reason the stars aligned in that moment, in the fall of 2023. We did understand that making the announcement that not only was (Portnoy) coming back, but that we’d be going into the studio again, the excitement would be crazy — for us, too. I think you can hear it on the album.”
The eight-track, 71-minute set — out Friday (Feb. 7) and recorded at Dream Theater’s DTHQ studio on Long Island — is the band’s 16th overall, and the follow-up to 2021’s A View From the Top of the World, which debuted at in the top 10 of Billboard‘s Top Hard Rock Albums, Top Rock Albums and Independent Albums charts. With its intricate arrangements, explosive dynamics, virtuosic playing and long-form compositions (six songs are over seven minutes and a closing epic, “The Shadow Man Incident,” clocks in at a heady 19:32), Parasomnia is everything Dream Theater envelopes while sounding decidedly present-day.
“I wanted it to sound modern but also classic,” Petrucci explains. “Some of the albums made between 1999 and 2009 or so, that’s a period that’s so beloved by our fans. So having Mike rejoin, I think there’s hope for some of that nostalgia coming back — and it pretty much did. You can hear it on the album. It definitely has that vibe. But as a producer I’m going in wanting to make an album that sounds better than anything else we’ve done before. So you try to push the envelope with ways of recording. It’s a combination of using modern techniques but using vintage audio equipment to do it and mash those up in a perfect way. And of course using great personnel — Jimmy T (Meslin) our engineer, Andy Sneap, Mark Gittins — these guys are helping to bring it into the future, into a modern sound. It’s a perfect balance of old and new.”
Petrucci says Parasomnia‘s concept is not based on any real-life sleeping disorders within the band. He first heard the term a few years ago and “kept it in my back pocket. I love the sound of that word. I love the tie-in to dreams and Dream Theater, and I loved that the subject matter could be so creepy and dark and heavy.” He researched the various parasomnias — including sleepwalking, night terrors and night paralysis — and used them as the basis for songs; one, “Dead Asleep,” was even drawn from a true story about a man who accidentally strangled his wife in bed while dreaming that he was fighting a home intruder.
The suite-like “The Shadow Man Incident,” meanwhile, is based on a pre-waking phenomenon of feeling the presence of “demons or dark figures,” according to Petrucci.
“It is a thematic, concept album,” he acknowledges, “so there are some Easter eggs throughout, (musical) themes that repeat themselves that I think hardcore fans will pick up on. We love doing stuff like that. I think it takes the album to another level. It makes it more epic, more classic, more special. And it’s so much fun.”
Portnoy, meanwhile, takes credit for pushing Dream Theater in the conceptual direction on Parasomnia. “It’s such an important album for us that I thought it needed to be something more than just a collection of songs,” he says. “That’s when we started creating the album, thinking of it in terms of one piece of work that you digest from start to finish, like watching a movie or reading a book. Once we decided to go in that direction it really opened the doors to make this a very special album.”
Dream Theater preceded Parasomnia‘s release with the tracks “Night Terror,” “A Broken Man” and “Midnight Messiah,” along with accompanying videos. The band returns to the road on release day in Philadelphia, with dates currently announced through a sold-out March 22 stop at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Petrucci says the trek will feature a couple of songs from the new album but is mostly designed to continue a celebration of Dream Theater’s 40th anniversary — which began last year, overseas — with a more Parasomnia-centric tour planned for later this year. Portnoy adds that Dream Theater hopes to play the new album in its entirety at that time.
“It’s pretty incredible I’m still in the same band with a guy I met when I was 12, in middle school, and a guy I met when I was 18, just starting at college,” Petrucci notes. “We all love doing it. We’re driven. We love playing our instruments, we love writing music together, recording music together, we love touring together. The chemistry and brotherhood we have as people is just so strong. And on top of that is a fan base that’s international and widespread and loyal and dedicated and devoted. We don’t take that for granted.
“Not every band survives, right? Bands break up, members leave. We know how lucky we are to have a 40-year career and that a member can leave and come back and rejoin with such happiness and excitement around it. That’s a testament to everybody’s love for doing it, and love for each other.”
