Ernie Ball recently unveiled an episode of Big Sound that offers fans a rare window into the world of Dream Theater. The progressive metal icons — James LaBrie, John Petrucci, John Myung, Jordan Rudess, and Mike Portnoy — welcomed cameras into their newly renovated private recording space. Amid walls lined with decades of instruments, equipment, and memories, the band showcased both their precision and emotional intensity in a special performance.
The set featured three songs: “Night Terror,” “Panic Attack,” and “Midnight Messiah.” Check out the clip below.
During an August 6 appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Mike Portnoy spoke about the recent tour the band completed through Europe.
Speaking about the experience, Portnoy said (via Blabbermouth): “It’s been incredible — the biggest tour the band has ever done. We started at the O2 in London, which was incredibly emotional, and then we wrapped the U.S. tour at Radio City Music Hall… There are so many highlights. It’s been incredible. We did all of Europe once with the ‘An Evening With’ [run of shows], then we did South America. We did North America, then we did this [European] festival run, and now we’re about to shift into finally doing a tour for the new album, ’cause through all this we put out a new album in February. We haven’t really had a chance to properly give attention to that yet, ’cause we’ve been so busy with the 40th-anniversary thing.”
Elaborating on whether the tracks from the band’s most recent album, Parasomnia, will be performed in the same order that they appear on the record, Portnoy confirmed: “Yeah, it was written to be performed that way. The whole album is very much like a concept album in that respect. So we’ve played a couple of the songs this past year on the 40th-anniversary tour, but now we could dig into it and give it a full top-to-bottom presentation. And then gonna celebrate the 30th anniversary of ‘A Change of Seasons’, which was like the first big epic the band put out 30 years ago. So we’re gonna play that as well.”
