Dream Theater’s drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci recently appeared on Coffee With Ola, the YouTube series hosted by Swedish guitarist and Solar Guitars founder Ola Englund. The duo shared insights into Portnoy’s return to the band after a 13-year hiatus, their creative process, and their upcoming album Parasomnia.
Reflecting on the reunion, Portnoy noted (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), "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.”
Portnoy described the awe-inspiring warmth from fans and the camaraderie within the band, emphasizing the deep connections forged over decades of collaboration: And every night James [LaBrie] welcomes me back on from stage. And it's been overwhelming, the amount of love and everybody being so welcoming back and everything."
The reunion has also brought new music, with the first single, "Night Terror,” showcasing their refreshed synergy. Petrucci explained, "There was some back and forth as to what single we should lead with, and ‘Night Terror’ is the first song that we wrote together… When we got together, that's what came out of us. And so, for us, yeah, maybe there are songs that are a little bit more immediate to the general fanbase, but for us, we felt it was important that the first thing that people heard is, 'Listen, this is what Dream Theater is. This is the first thing we wrote. This identifies all the stuff that everybody loves about the band and showcases Mike.' I always said that opening fill before the guitar riff that Mike does, that fill is like, 'I'm back.' [Laughs] 'In case you missed me.' And I think he did that in one take. It was, like, 'Yeah, that's it. That's the signature.'"
Portnoy reflected on the natural ease of creating with the band again, saying, "To be back with these guys, it feels really special. It feels like family… 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 and 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,'" Portnoy added.
Petrucci elaborated on their connection, describing it as an unspoken musical language: "It's tough to explain. For anybody out there who has been in bands with their friends, you almost have like an unspoken language, like somebody plays something, I know what he means when he plays it and I respond, and vice versa. So it's, like, immediately the songs just developed and grew in such a natural and organic way. It was so cool."
Discussing Parasomnia, their 16th studio album set for release on February 7, 2025, Petrucci revealed its thematic inspiration, describing it as a reflection on the wide spectrum of sleep disturbances. He compared it to their 2002 album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, saying: "Without giving too much of a way, because we always like to keep the mystery, but I think this has been said before, the album's called 'Parasomnia', and for those people that don't know what that is, it kind of encompasses a broad range of sleep disturbances, and that could range from snoring to some scarier things, like sleepwalking and night terrors, false awakenings and things like that that are actually really very frightening for the people that it happens to."
"So, much in the way that [2002's] Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence'had a lyrical theme to it where there were different case studies having to do with challenges of mental illness and stuff like that, Parasomnia is sort of the sleep disturbance version of that, but in an entire record, as opposed to just a song."
