Dream Theater at the Masonic, 5 things to know

It’s been 35 years since Majesty changed its name to Dream Theater in Massachusetts, and suffice to say the progressive/metal quintet hasn’t looked back since.

Since 1989 Dream Theater has released 15 studio albums and become a standard-bearer for its genre ⁠– finally winning its first Grammy last year, Best Metal Performance for “The Alien” from its 2021 album “A View From the Top of the World.” The latter was recorded during the pandemic, partly remotely, and was the band’s first made at its home studio, DTHQ on Long Island; it hit No. 1 on iTunes’ Top Metal Albums chart and in the Top 5 of the service’s All Genres survey.

This year Dream Theater has embarked on a new project ⁠– Dreamsonic, a package tour also featuring Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders. It will be the first of a series, according to guitarist John Petrucci, and a closing chapter for the “A View...” campaign...

• Dream Theater has been part of package tours before, including its own Progressive Nation trek and Megadeth’s Gigantour. But Petrucci, 55, says Dreamsonic takes the idea in another direction. “It was fun when we’ve done it in the past, and creating a traveling music festival that focused on progressive metal just seemed like a real cool idea, and hearing that Devin Townsend and Animals were also looking to out this summer, it kind of made sense to make this the inaugural lineup. When the idea hit it just seemed to really make sense, like, ‘This could be something really cool.’”

• Dream Theater has primarily toured on its own in recent year, so Petrucci says one of the perks of Dreamsonic is simply having more people around. “It’s a fun feeling because when you’re out with your own team and your own band playing, it’s kind of your little bubble. having two different bands traveling with us, different crews, there’s a lot of people on the tour, a lot more camaraderie. It’s fun. It’s summertime. We play together on stage at the end of the show. It’s a different kind of feeling. It’s just fun to do something like this, just for a change.”

• Dream Theater definitely intends to make Dreamsonic a continuing enterprise, too. “We have those discussions constantly ⁠– ‘This band would be great, that band would be great,’” Petrucci says. “With this type of thing it comes down to timing, what cycle we’re in, which bands are available. It’s the kind of thing that needs to be planned pretty far out. But, yeah, we’ve been putting together a list of bands we think would fit great with this, whenever we do it again.”

• Petrucci says Dream Theater viewed its Grammy Award not only for itself but also for the genre it’s part of. “I pointed out in my speech that it was like a win for the prog/metal community. I felt, like, this great sort of sense of pride for everybody who does this sort of thing, and being recognized for doing this on our own terms for so many years, 15 albums later. And because we made (the album) during the pandemic, just five guys doing what we love instead of sitting around doing nothing but watching Netflix, it was that much more meaningful to have a Grammy win off of that.”

• After Dreamsonic wraps in late July Petrucci will move on to his annual Guitar Universe camp during August in Florida then predicts Dream Theater “will take some much-needed time off. We’ve been touring pretty straight since the world opened back up, so we’ll take some time off, then start working on another (album), probably early next year. We’ll have a library of ideas and seeds we can choose from, or start from a completely blank slate and just go with it. Inspiration hits at any given moment and you just have to be ready for it.”