When Dream Theater introduced their new report, Parasomnia, followers hoped that one thing particular would come. What they won’t have anticipated was simply how heavy the album would turn into compared to the band’s newest efforts.
In a current dialog with Dylan Gowan of Banger TV, Portnoy talked about such a renewed depth, and the way the band leaned into their heaviest impulses.
“Yeah, I feel generally folks overlook the significance of the steel aspect to Dream Theater, particularly with me within the band,” Portnoy mentioned (by way of Blabbermouth). “It’s a very necessary side. It at all times has been. Should you take a look at the very, very first tune from the very first album, in ‘A Fortune In Lies’, I used to be taking part in thrash, double bass, thrash beats proper outta the gate.”
That steel spine has at all times been a part of their DNA, based on Portnoy, even because the band constructed its repute on progressive complexity. “And we’ve at all times had songs like that, whether or not or not it’s ‘The Glass Jail’ or ‘Panic Assault’ or ‘A Nightmare To Bear in mind’. It’s been a giant a part of the band’s sound, and, to be trustworthy, I feel it’s a giant a part of the band’s success.”
Portnoy pointed to the band’s means to faucet into each the progressive and steel crowds as a key purpose for his or her attain and longevity. “There’s a variety of prog bands or prog steel bands which are nonetheless type of underground and nonetheless play smaller reveals or perhaps don’t promote as many information as a result of perhaps they haven’t tapped into the steel aspect.”
“However the truth that the steel aspect is such a giant, huge a part of our sound, I feel, is what elevates Dream Theater to be the cream of the crop when it comes to ticket gross sales and report gross sales within the prog universe,” he continued. “I feel it’s that steel aspect that does it. The truth that we might play these huge steel festivals like Aftershock or Louder Than Life or Hellfest or Graspop, the truth that we might pull off gigs like that as a prog steel band speaks loads for that steel aspect.”
Regardless of its heavy tone, Parasomnia wasn’t designed to sound that method — it merely developed in that course. “And when writing Parasomnia, we simply naturally fell into it,” Portnoy defined. “Possibly it was the darkish subject material of sleep issues and nightmares and issues like that, perhaps that helped us gravitate in direction of it.”
For followers questioning how this new materials stacks up towards the band’s earlier work, Portnoy supplied a transparent comparability: “If I needed to describe Parasomnia, the album, to anyone, I’d say it type of has the darkness and heaviness of Prepare Of Thought with the cinematic method of Scenes From A Reminiscence.”
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