MIKE PORTNOY Slams 13-Year-Old BLABBERMOUTH.NET Trolls Sitting In Their Parents' Basement

Bram Teitelman of Metal Insider recently conducted an interview with drummer Mike Portnoy (ADRENALINE MOB, DREAM THEATER, AVENGED SEVENFOLD). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Insider: In a recent interview, Russell [Allen, SYMPHONY X and ADRENALINE MOB singer] said he didn't care what DREAM THEATER or SYMPHONY X fans thought of ADRENALINE MOB and that the criticism doesn't really bother him. Do you have any thoughts on what DREAM THEATER fans have thought of the [ADRENALINE MOB] record ["Omertá"] so far?

Portnoy: Well, I guess, if anything, I'm guilty of caring too much. I really do care what people think, and I revolved my whole career and all the twenty five years with DREAM THEATER… I ran that band and made decisions based on caring what the fans thought and wanted. I'd love to sit here and say I don't care what they say, but the truth is that I do. That stuff carries a lot of weight with me. It hurts when people say negative things, because I'm at a place in my career where I'm trying to stay very positive and optimistic, and everything is very good in my world right now. When I see people trying to drag it down and do all this negative trolling online, it really hurts. I find myself a much happier person when I turn off my computer and live my life. So I have to say that stuff matters to me. But I understand that ADRENALINE MOB is not going to be every DREAM THEATER fan's cup of tea. I totally get that, I understand that, it's different world. I know there are a lot of DREAM THEATER fans that do like the heavier side of music, but there are some that don't. Different strokes for different folks. I get that and I understand it. I just don't see the need for the negative, mean responses. There's no need for that. If you don't like it, move on. If it's not your cup of tea, then just move on. As far as I'm concerned, variety is the spice of life and that's where I'm at right now. I want to do different things with different bands and different musicians, and I really want to dive into many different styles and genres. I'm a music fan first and foremost. I can find the beauty in JELLYFISH and U2 just as much as OPETH and LAMB OF GOD, just as much as I can with RUSH and YES. So I want to do all those things in my career. I don't want to do just one.

Metal Insider: And you've always been very hands-on with communicating with fans, even in the pre-Facebook and -Twitter days. Has that been important to you from the beginning?

Portnoy: Yeah, it's been crucial to me, even in the very, very early days in the mid-Eighties when DREAM THEATER was still MAJESTY. I was the band member that was sitting there soliciting the demos to different magazines and answering fan mail and writing to everyone who wrote to us. I was always that guy. And then through all the years of DREAM THEATER, I was the one that ran all the fan-club CDs and the official bootlegs and web sites and oversaw the message boards. I've always been very hands-on with that. And now in the age of social media with Facebook and Twitter, I think it's an incredibly valuable tool keeping in touch with the fans, hearing what they have to say and keeping them informed. I've always been about that and that's not going to change now even though I'm not in DREAM THEATER. I will still apply that mentality and that personality to everything I do. But it's not like it hasn't hurt me. It's been a great thing because I'm very in touch with the fans and I can keep them involved day to day. But it has hurt me in a way because I am so open with the fans a lot of times, things I say get blown up and taken to other places, other web sites, that try and sensationalize everything and blow things up and try and make mountains out of mole hills. And all I'm doing is just trying to stay in touch with the fans. I know with AVENGED SEVENFOLD, they didn't like the social media. Once I was touring with them I wasn't going to just cut off my fan base because I was playing in a band that wasn't very open. I needed to still have that open relationship with the fans. So even when I was with AVENGED, I needed to have that outlet and that relationship with the fans, I wasn't going to just cut them off. I know once everything went down with DREAM THEATER and I was still trying to be open with the fans and still trying to explain things, the media just took it and blew it up to such ridiculous proportions. It went places where it really didn't need to go, but all I was doing was what I've always done — trying to be very open and straight-forward and no-bullshit, no-strings-attached with the fans. I've always valued that relationship and that's something that's never going to change.

Metal Insider: Did you think it was going to get to this point with social media when it started out?

Portnoy: Well, I guess it was inevitable. I mean, even before social media in the late Nineties, early 2000s, just with the Internet itself and message boards. It began that open line of communication and suddenly you're able to see what the fans were saying. Back in the '80s, when I was starting out in this business, you basically put out your record and the only feedback you ever got was journalists either in magazines or on TV or on radio and that was it. The fans never had a say or an opinion. Once the Internet came around in the late Nineties, suddenly I was reading message boards and web site digests and blogs, and suddenly everybody is given a voice. And it's a great thing, but it's also a dangerous thing. You see all these negative trolls on Blabbermouth and they're using their computers as a weapon. Half of them I bet are thirteen-year-old kids sitting in their parents' basement looking to stir shit up. It's frustrating to see people using the Internet as a weapon, but I'd like to think that for every one asshole that's doing that, there's ninety nine using it productively and creatively and in a more positive manner. But it's always the one that makes me fucking insane and crazy as oppose to the ninety nine that are saying great things. It just takes that one rotten apple to ruin the party.

Read the entire interview from Metal Insider.