As Dream Theater, Anthrax, Jeff Beck, Iron Maiden, Joe Satriani and others gear up to release new albums, Guitar World takes a look at the road ahead to see what’s in store for 2015.

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Progressive rock titans Dream Theater are currently hard at work on album number 13, which is due in September – but the groundwork for the album goes surprisingly far back. “The process started two years ago,” says guitarist John Petrucci. “The seed was planted during the promo trip for the previous album, in August 2013, and it’s something that we started to work on a little bit on the road from last January.”

Petrucci and keyboard player Jordan Rudess began putting the songs together in November 2014, with session beginning this February. Petrucci is remaining tight-lipped about the direction for now. “We don’t like to reveal anything this early,” he says. “And the reason is because it’s fun to do that! I think it makes it more interesting as it gets closer and you finally start to hear about it, as opposed to a built-up type of thing. We still write albums, as opposed to singles, with the mindset that people will listen to it like they’re sitting down to watch a movie. You don’t watch the first seven minutes – you sit down and watch a movie from beginning to end.”

Petrucci’s songwriting demos begin in a very stripped-down form, often as simply as an iPhone recording. “It could be as crude as me singing an idea, or playing my guitar amplified or unplugged – however an idea occurs,” he says. “Jordan does the same. Then it’s a matter of sifting through, figuring out what’s usable and what’s not. When we write together like that we focus more on what the vocal sections are, main themes... sometimes we’ll go off into instrumental parts but we save a lot of that for when we’re all together and we can jam it out.”

—Peter Hodgson