Dream Theater: A Work In Progress

Rare is the band that can tour with both Yes and Megadeth. Even rarer is one that, 20 years after its inception, still hasn’t stopped growing. Then again, Dream Theater has made a career out of defying convention, so it’s only natural for the progressive metal quintet to keep progressing.

Over the course of eight studio albums, three multi-disc live recordings and a legendary EP, the band has continually explored the boundaries of its genre, covering the entire spectrum between aggressive shredfests (2003’s Train Of Thought) and the comparatively commercial (1997’s Falling Into Infinity). As prog bands are prone to do, they’ve also tackled the concept album along the way, first on 1999’s Scenes From A Memory and then on the second half of the 2001 double-album Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence.

The conceptual beast rears its head once again on new album Octavarium, which might be the most all-encompassing Dream Theater album yet, variously recalling each of its predecessors over the course of its 76 minutes while also breaking new ground for the band. Just don’t ask drummer Mike Portnoy for spoilers. He’ll tell you to figure it out for yourself. It’s no wonder they’ve been described as a thinking fan’s band...

Metal Maniacs: The 19-month window between the releases of Train Of Thought and Octavarium marks the quickest turnaround between albums in Dream Theater’s history.

Mike Portnoy: Quickest in terms of the amount of time from the last tour to getting back on the road for the next tour, but I wouldn’t say quickest in terms of the making of the record. That was a five-month process, which is as long, if not longer than any other album. The back-in-the-studio, back-on-the-road time was quick, but the making of it was pretty extensive.

MM: What did you aim to accomplish this time around?

MP: The first goal was to make something different from Train Of Thought. We never want to repeat ourselves. That album was very dark, heavy and aggressive from start to finish. We knew we needed to make something a little different from that, and we made something a little more traditional in terms of balances of styles.

The other goal was: there was a concept that I brought into the band that gave us a blueprint to work with when making this record. It’s not a concept album in the traditional sense, where it’s telling a story like Scenes From A Memory or Operation: Mindcrime, but it’s a concept album in the vein of Dark Side Of The Moon, [with] a theme that runs throughout the entire album. Once you hear the album in its entirety and see the artwork, which has a big part to do with the puzzle, the whole Octavarium concept will make a lot more sense. There’s lots of connections, from song to song and even from album to album. I think anybody who really sits with the album and digs in will figure it out.

MM: Octavarium marks Dream Theater’s first record in more than a decade without producer/mixer Kevin Shirley (Iron Maiden, Aerosmith) involved in some capacity.

MP: We love Kevin and we still have a great relationship with him, but I think we’ve been working with him for about eight years now, and we just don’t want to do the same thing forever, so we decided to get some new ears. Kevin was totally understanding and supportive.

MM: At the same time, Octavarium is the fourth Dream Theater album in a row that you and guitarist John Petrucci have co-produced. Would you ever consider working with on outside producer again?

MP: I never say never, but we enjoy having complete artistic freedom. And we do have the objective ears of on outside mixer. We’ve continued to always use on outside mixer, whether it be Kevin or in this case Michael Brauer. I think we’re getting the best of both worlds by doing it that way.

MM: One of the first things revealed publicly about Octavarium was a quote from John, who called it “more diverse” than Train Of Thought. Do you agree?

MP: Absolutely. If you look of our last two or three albums, I think 90% of the songs are in the double digits. It was a conscious effort this time around to try to write some shorter songs, and for us, that’s a challenge. A couple of these songs were definitely written in that vein, especially “These Walls,” “I Walk Beside You” and “The Answer lies Within.”

MM: As a result, the album at times hearkens back to 1997’s Falling Into Infinity, your most commercial and accessible release.

MP: I think that’s a very good comparison, and something I agree with. The big difference is that album was made under serious pressure from the record company and producers and even outside writers. I would say this album is kind of what Falling Into Infinity would have been if we made it completely on our own terms without any inside influence or input. This is our version of Falling Into Infinity.

MM: You wrote the lyrics for “The Root Of All Evil,” which continues your multi-album suite based on Alcoholics Anonymous, 12-step program. This brings us up to step seven.

MP: My vision all along was to create a big 60-minute song that spreads across four, five or six albums. In one way, it’s going to be very cool and rewording at the end, but on the other hand, it’s like I’ve dug myself into this hole that I can’t get out of [laughs]. I have no choice. One of the lines out of the AA “Big Book” – which all of this is based on – is, “Half measures avail us nothing,” which basically means doing things half-ass is not the way to do anything. That would apply to this process as well – I have no choice but to complete the entire thing in order for it to really mean something.

MM: What inspired you to tackle the subject in the first place?

MP: My lyrics have always tended to be [inspired by] things directly out of my life, and I’ve always written that way, starting with “A Change Of Seasons,” which dealt with me losing my mother in a plane crash, among other things. If you look at pretty much anything I’ve ever written, it’s been that way – it comes out of things going on in my life. My recovery from addiction is a big, big part of my life over the last five years, so I wanted to write about it because it’s very therapeutic.

MM: You also wrote lyrics for “Never Enough,” which seems thematically linked to Train Of Thought’s “Endless Sacrifice.”

MP: “Endless Sacrifice” was written to a person’s wife or spouse, [but] “Never Enough” was written more towards our “fans” – or fanatics. The message is, if you’re not appreciated in a relationship, you always wonder: Would you ever be appreciated if you walked away? That’s the question I ask.

I live, sleep, drink, shit and breathe Dream Theater 24 hours a day. I literally do not turn the Dream Theater switch off, ever. I’m laying in bed at 5:00 in the morning trying to think of things to make the concerts special, or the fan club special, or the official bootlegs special. And I will continue to do it; that’s just the way I function. that’s what makes Dream Theater unique – but I can’t help but wonder sometimes if it’s all in vain.

MM: On the opposite end of the spectrum, “I Walk Beside You” is perhaps the most inspirational and uplifting song the band has ever written. And it’s only 4:30, so it has “single” written all over it.

MP: We didn’t write it with that in mind. We wrote it as an exercise in trying to write something more concise. I think it’s a great song, and if radio did pick up on it, that would be a nice surprise for us. But I think there’s a lot of radio [programmers] that would never even listen to a song like “I Walk Beside You” with open ears, because they hear Dream Theater and think “Pull Me Under” in 1992. In a perfect world, I think it could be a huge song. I think we’ve always had songs like that on our albums, and it’s a shame that they’re not listened to with open ears because of the stereotype that’s attached to us.

MM: Just as you continue to grow and evolve in the studio, the band’s profile continues to grow. Even without radio, you’re as big now as you’ve ever been.

MP: It’s great. This year marks our 20th anniversary, and there’s not many bands in their 20-year mark that are still going uphill. By their 20-year mark, most bands are past their prime and down to playing clubs on small independent labels. We’re incredibly fortunate that we’ve been able to nurture the growth of the band like this, and have this slow building process. It’s been one of the keys to our longevity. All the bands that blow up and have immediate success within five years, those are the bands that disintegrate, die, break-up or disappear when the trends change. The fact that we’ve had a slow, gradual build with this devoted fan base has kept us here for 20 years, and we’re still growing. We’re not on the downslide at this point – we’re still climbing.

MM: Why do you think that is? It’s not like you’re on overnight sensation, so what makes you a bigger concert draw these days?

MP: Our fans have carried us this far, and I think the fans we pick up are fans for life. It’s not like our fans are casual, just listening to us for one album or one song and then moving onto the next thing. It’s on accumulative thing, and I think it’s been growing now for many, many years. Also, the fans that we’ve picked up are now getting to be older to where now they have kids, and it’s [becoming] a generational thing that just continues to develop and blossom.

I’ve always made this comparison, but I think we’re the Phish or Grateful Dead of heavy metal. Those bands maintained and developed their careers without the help of radio or MTV, and I think we’re the same. If you look at any of the other bands who do the summer circuit, there’s not many of them that have the mainstream handicap that we have. There’s not many bands like ours that can do this. It’s totally gratifying, and an amazing thing for us of this point in our career.

MM: Any plans to officially celebrate the 20th anniversary?

MP: Maybe later in the tour. We’re starting off the first few legs with more package-type bills, but once we get into the “Evening With” stuff in the fall and in the winter, we’ll probably start to really commemorate the 20th anniversary.

MM: How’d you get involved with Gigantour, which you co-headlined with Megadeth?

MP: It was as simple as Dave [Mustaine] throwing our name out there. I’ve known Dave for many, many years now, and he and I have stayed in touch. He had this idea to do this traveling festival. The timing worked for us, because it was right on the heels of a new album and everything about it seemed cool. We were up for it.

MM: Even with the short turnaround time between albums, you and your bandmates seemed to release more side projects over the last year and a half than ever before.

MP: Dream Theater is inevitably going to have time off, and I think it’s fair to let everybody do whatever the hell they want with their free time. It probably would be detrimental to say, “okay, you have to play with these people for the rest of your life.” I think that was a big part of the disintegration of Metallica, or at least their relationship with Jason Newsted. I don’t think it’s fair to tie a noose around any members’ necks and not allow them to play music. This is what we do – we’re musicians, and we love to play. And I think it’s been a good thing for each of us to go out there and play with other people, because we’ve been able to bring those experiences back to Dream Theater. As long as each of us remembers that Dream Theater is our number one priority and focus, our bread and butter, our home base – as long as we all respect that, I think we’re good to go.