DREAM THEATER Announces 'Parasomnia' Album, Shares 'Night Terror' Music Video

Progressive music titans DREAM THEATER will release their sixteenth studio album, "Parasomnia", on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks the band's first release with drummer Mike Portnoy since 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings". The news on this latest album comes on the heels of the recent announcement of the tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of the band.

"Parasomnia" was produced by guitarist John Petrucci, engineered by James "Jimmy T" Meslin, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme returns once again to lend his creative vision to the cover art.

From the opening track "In The Arms Of Morpheus" to the closer of "The Shadow Man Incident", DREAM THEATER returns with a collection of songs that showcase what has earned the band a loyal following for four decades. Clocking in at 71 minutes, "Parasomnia" takes the listener on a musical journey that has become synonymous with the band since the beginning of their career. "Parasomnia" is a term for disruptive, sleep-related disturbances including sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, and night terrors. Songs like "A Broken Man", "Dead Asleep", "Midnight Messiah" and "Bend The Clock" all build upon the themes brought on by the album title. The first single, "Night Terror", is a musical thrill ride captured in the just shy of ten minutes listening experience. A music video for the song — directed by Mike Leonard — is now available and can be seen below.

The track listing for "Parasomnia" is:

01. In The Arms Of Morpheus (5:22)
02. Night Terror (9:55)
03. A Broken Man (8:30)
04. Dead Asleep (11:06)
05. Midnight Messiah (7:58)
06. Are We Dreaming? (1:28)
07. Bend The Clock (7:24)
08. The Shadow Man Incident (19:32)

Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with guitarist John Petrucci and bassist John Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989's "When Dream And Day Unite" through 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", before exiting the group in 2010.

Mike Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy. Mangini beat out six other of the world's top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called "The Spirit Carries On".

Asked by Brazil's Marcelo Vieira and Matheus Ribeiro if DREAM THEATER's upcoming LP picks up from where the last DT album he played on, 2009's "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", left off or if it's a different thing entirely, Portnoy said: "If I'm being honest, I think it picks up right where 'Black Clouds' left off, to be honest. There's a certain style that the five of us have when we write together. And if you listen to the album with this lineup from 1999, '[Metropolis Pt. 2:] Scenes From A Memory', through 2009's 'Black Clouds & Silver Linings', if you look at that string of five or six albums, that's the sound and style of these five people. So I think that's a good indication of what you can expect with the new DREAM THEATER album. It definitely sounds like classic DREAM THEATER."

In a recent interview with U.K.'s Devolution magazine, DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess talked about the band's upcoming sixteenth album. Regarding Portnoy's reunion with DREAM THEATER, Rudess said: "I'm really excited because welcoming Mike back is a really emotional, really beautiful thing to his home, where he really should be. He's been so wonderful and very respectful of all of us in terms of — he was gone for a long time. And he has all these skills beyond drumming. So he asks, 'Do you mind if I get involved with this? Is it okay if I get involved with this?' And we're always, like, 'Yeah, man, come on, bring it on. All the stuff that you do, all the Mike Portnoy stuff is important.' And I am so happy because, you know, when I listen back to the music that we've been creating, it's got his stamp on it. You know that some of the stuff is coming from his brain."

Jordan added: "Let's say it kind of like it is. DREAM THEATER survived for 13 years without him. We did fine. We won a Grammy. We wrote a lot of good music. We had a fantastic drummer. All that's good. But he came back, and now you will feel it in the music, you will hear it in the songs, you will see it when we're going out and playing live. It's unmistakable. This guy, he's who he is. He's a big character. He's very, very talented. Great drummer. Really great thinker about all the different elements that go into musical-visual creation. And this album we're working on just emits that. Everyone will know as soon as they hear it. So I'm really super excited about it, and all of it it's great."

In July, Rudess was asked by Chris Akin Presents how the upcoming DREAM THEATER album compares to the rest of the band's discography. Jordan said: "Well, let's put it this way. There's this undeniable, almost unexplainable or inexplainable, whatever the word is, type of thing that happens with drummers. We survived beautifully in the 13 years that Mike Portnoy was not there. Mike Mangini was a supreme drummer, just incredible. And that said, all the albums with Portnoy, all the albums with Mangini, they have different flavors, because there's something about the back beat, if you will, of a band and the drummer that just gives an energy to the whole thing. And a lot of people speak of that. It's kind of hard to pin down. But you really notice it. Like on this new album, I listen to it and I go, 'Okay, I feel the Portnoy energy back there.'

"I would say what I'm hearing personally is classic kind of DREAM THEATER, whatever that means to anybody that's listening," he continued. "You'll have to wait and see. Think of it this way: the core band is back together again. It's classic DREAM THEATER. I also like to point out that we are a bunch of guys that we take what we do very, very seriously. We put every ounce, every bit of effort, energy into everything we do. We care so much about it, each and every one of us.

"The other day, I was talking to John Petrucci in the studio when I was doing my keyboard parts. And we were really deep and working really hard and spending long hours and just getting things to where we feel they're really, really right. And I said to John, I said, 'John, look at what we're doing. We're here late. We're working like crazy. Why? We could have been making pop music. Why are we doing this?' Just to really understand, because a lot of people don't put the kind of effort, I guess, especially these days when there tends to be a different kind of work ethic around, and maybe we're kind of like old school in that way. But to produce a product, to make something that's gonna last, that is gonna be shared with a large number of people, that's just gonna live on, in a way, forever, that, to us, is a really serious thing. And as artists, we're trying to make a statement."

Circling back to Portnoy's influence on the new DREAM THEATER music, Jordan said: "One of the beautiful things is Mike has brought with him all his incredible skills. He's not a guy who just plays the drums really well. He also understands this business. I always like to say that he's got kind of like a film director's mentality, he's looking at everything from a conceptual point of view, and he has skills that the rest of us don't. I mean, yes, we survived fine [without Portnoy], we did really well, we won a Grammy [while he was out of the band] and all that, but there's a magic there that we now have back. It's cool — it's really cool. We're super excited."