JORDAN RUDESS On Upcoming DREAM THEATER Album: 'It's Got MIKE PORTNOY's Stamp On It'

In a new interview with U.K.'s Devolution magazine, DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess talked about the band's upcoming sixteenth album, which will mark the progressive metal legends' first LP since drummer Mike Portnoy's return to the group last October. Asked how the recording sessions are coming along, Jordan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yeah, it's going great. We all finished all our tracks and everything, and now it's in that whole phase where everything else has to happen, all the things that happen after the musicians finish playing their notes and singing. So it's going great."

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."

Last month, Rudess was asked by Lots Of Muzik if his work on his latest solo album, "Permission To Fly", has in any way influenced the upcoming DREAM THEATER LP. He responded: "I think that as a musician, always evolving and working on my craft, in that sense, yes. I probably had a lot of different harmonic ideas and rhythmic ideas in my head just from the time I spent focusing on my solo album. And I bring those in to DREAM THEATER.

"DREAM THEATER is a very different situation," he explained. "First of all, picture me in front of my speakers as a keyboardist and just creating this thing almost like I'm in a bubble. So that's that. And then imagine now I'm in the studio with all the guys of DREAM THEATER in a rehearsal room and we're just writing music together and wearing headphones, just kind of developing our own parts and everything like that. So my role is so different. But, yeah, certainly I would bring in wherever I was at musically to this role to work with all these amazingly talented guys.

"The DREAM THEATER thing is very unique, especially now because [original DREAM THEATER drummer] Mike Portnoy is back, and that's been a major thing in so many different ways for the band. Just having him back, it's deep because it was 13 years that he was gone. Then he comes back, so all the musical things that he brings, his drumming, his creativity, his mindset about music… I've been thinking about it a lot and I like to point out that he has kind of like a film director's mentality with the way that he looks at producing a work, like an album, and that talent all is going into this new album. And we're really a team. And John Petrucci [DREAM THEATER guitarist], not only is he one of the world's greatest guitar players, but he's also an excellent producer and really has a great way to work with everybody."

Rudess added: "I think everybody's gonna love this [new album]. I can pretty much guarantee it. We don't mess around. We're not people who take what we do lightly. We're really serious. We stay there and we work on things until they're absolutely right and until everybody thinks that, 'Okay, this is really great.' So I have a feeling that all the DREAM THEATER fans around the world, they're in for a really big treat. And, of course, you know, they're gonna have something to listen to, 'cause on September 6th, 'Permission To Fly' comes out. And they'll have that to listen to while they wait for the DREAM THEATER album. And there's no official announced release date yet, but they will have a little time to wait and sink their heads into some good prog and go on the Jordan ride while they wait for this what I think is forming to be an exceptional DREAM THEATER album."

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."

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."