DREAM THEATER Guitarist Talks To Sweden's ACCESS: ROCK About New Album (Video)

Anna Dave Bertram of Sweden's Access: Rock recently conducted an interview with guitarist John Petrucci of progressive metal giants DREAM THEATER in Stockholm. You can now watch the chat below.

The new self-titled album from DREAM THEATER is available for streaming in its entirety using the SoundCloud widget below (courtesy of RollingStone.com).

"Dream Theater" — the band's 12th studio release overall, and fourth with Roadrunner Records — will be released on September 24.

Speaking to Ultimate-Guitar.com, Petrucci stated about "Dream Theater": "I think it's building on [what we did on the "A Dramatic Turn of Events" album], but taking it to the next level. One of the things I really wanted to do on 'A Dramatic Turn of Events' was to create something that was sonically very rich and high-def and powerful and I think we accomplished that. But on this album, I wanted to take that even further…. [I wanted to] get more cinematic with it and more earthy and aggressive and bigger. I wanted a bigger, more forward in-your-face kind of sound. I think that kind of dictated the sounds we went for while we were writing and recording and then ultimately how it was mixed. So yeah, it was kind of building on that, but taking it to the next level. You always need to progress and to try and do something different and kind of have a little bit different take on it and a different perspective. But hopefully make it better as you go."

The nine-track disc was recorded at Cove City Studio in Glen Cove, Long Island, with Petrucci producing and Richard Chycki engineering and mixing. It's the band's second album with drummer Mike Mangini, and the first one on which he was a part of the writing process from Day One.

In January, Petrucci said of Mangini's work: "When people hear the drumming on this album, they're gonna be pretty freaked out. On the last album, he did a great job, but he wasn't there for the writing process and he was interpreting drum parts that I had programmed. Even though he used his creativity, of course, to change them up and do his thing, I feel like now he's just Mike Mangini unleashed. It's all him. It's all his creativity, all his decisions and ideas and man, the guy's an animal."

"Dream Theater" track listing:

01. False Awakening Suite
I. Sleep Paralysis
II. Night Terrors
III. Lucid Dream
02. The Enemy Inside
03. The Looking Glass
04. Enigma Machine
05. The Bigger Picture
06. Behind The Veil
07. Surrender To Reason
08. Along For The Ride
09. Illumination Theory
I. Paradoxe de la Lumière Noire
II. Live, Die, Kill
III. The Embracing Circle
IV. The Pursuit of Truth
V. Surrender, Trust & Passion

"Dream Theater" will be available in a wide range of distinctive versions, including standard and special edition CDs, 180-gram double LP, and a limited-edition boxed set.

DREAM THEATER will be on tour in Europe in January and February 2014, and in North America in March 2014.