Dream Theater confirm start of recording sessions for album #17

Dream Theater announced briefly on social media on October 13th that production has begun on their forthcoming seventeenth studio album. The GRAMMY Award-winning progressive metal ensemble shared a studio photograph to mark the initiation of these recording sessions, with additional information to be provided in the future.

Dream Theater is an American band specializing in progressive metal, established in 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts. The group consists of John Petrucci (guitar), John Myung (bass), Mike Portnoy (drums), James LaBrie (vocals), and Jordan Rudess (keyboards). The band was initially formed under the name Majesty by Petrucci, Myung, and Portnoy, all of whom hailed from Long Island, New York, while attending Berklee College of Music. They subsequently dropped out to focus exclusively on their musical endeavors.

Dream Theater has experienced multiple lineup changes, although Petrucci and Myung have maintained continuous membership, with Portnoy remaining active in the band. After brief collaborations with Chris Collins and Charlie Dominici, the latter was dismissed shortly after the release of their debut album, “When Dream and Day Unite”, in 1989. In 1991, James LaBrie was recruited as the band’s vocalist. Kevin Moore, the original keyboardist, departed after three albums and was succeeded by Derek Sherinian in 1995, following a touring period. Sherinian contributed to one album and an EP before being replaced by Jordan Rudess in 1999.

Mike Portnoy departed from the band in 2010 to pursue other musical projects and was replaced by Mike Mangini. Portnoy rejoined the band in October 2023. Dream Theater has released a total of sixteen studio albums. Their most commercially successful release is their second album, “Images and Words” (1992), which achieved a peak position of No. 61 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Other notable albums, such as “Awake” (1994) and “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence” (2002), also charted at No. 32 and No. 46 respectively, and garnered critical praise. Their fifth album, “Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory” (1999), was ranked number 95 on Guitar World magazine’s list of the greatest 100 guitar albums of all time in October 2006, and was also recognized as the 15th Greatest Concept Album by Classic Rock magazine in March 2003.

By 2018, Dream Theater had sold over 12 million records globally. The band has received four Grammy Award nominations, including a victory in 2022. They are often regarded as one of the “big three” of the progressive metal genre, alongside Queensrÿche and Fates Warning, for their role in its development and dissemination.