JORDAN RUDESS Says DREAM THEATER Was 'In The Mood' To Write Shorter Songs On 'Distance Over Time'

In a recent interview with Romania's ARTMania Festival, keyboardist Jordan Rudess of progressive metal giants DREAM THEATER spoke about the lack of ten-minute-plus "epics" on their new "Distance Over Time" studio album. The follow-up to 2016's much-debated "The Astonishing" double concept album, "Distance Over Time" finds DREAM THEATER going back to its early, heavy progressive metal roots.

"We were in the headspace or in the mood to write some things that were a little bit shorter," Jordan said (see video below). There's things like 'Pale Blue Dot', which is pretty epic in size and also in scope. But we didn't feel any particular desire to write something that was especially long. We wanted to make this album's songs that were a little bit more dialed in, a little bit more to the core. It was more of a goal, actually, to focus on writing things that were a little bit more concise. Not that we have anything against longer songs. I mean, who knows what will happen on the next album? We might write an hour-long song. It was just for this album, we felt like, 'You know what? Let's write some songs that were a little bit shorter. More direct. Try to figure out or feel what's more to the core of our sound, and put that out there.' That being said, I feel like one of my favorite songs on the new album is 'Pale Blue Dot'. I feel like it has that epic feeling to it and it does a lot of changes and weaves through a lot of interesting sounds and feelings. For me, it satisfies that part of what we do. It doesn't need to be longer than whatever it is — nine-plus minutes long. It's pretty long for a song."

DREAM THEATER recently announced the fall leg of its "The Distance Over Time Tour - Celebrating 20 Years of Scenes From A Memory" tour. The trek will kick off at the end of September and run through mid-November. The 27-date tour will see the band making stops in Louisville, Kentucky; Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Long Island, New York; and San Jose, California, to name a few.

"Distance Over Time" marks DREAM THEATER's first album for Sony Music's progressive imprint InsideOut Music. The group spent the past 25 years recording under various labels in the Warner Music Group system, most recently Roadrunner Records, which released five albums by the band between 2007 and 2016.