DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci recently spoke with Revolver about his renewed working relationship with former DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy.
Petrucci and Portnoy recently reunited on Petrucci’s second solo album, “Terminal Velocity”, which marked the first time the two musicians had recorded together in over a decade.
Petrucci tells Revolver: “Chemistry is everything. It’s funny, too — with my solo album, I’d gone in, written all the music, recorded all the guitars, programmed drums, played bass. It was all done, and then I had to go in and get Dave LaRue to play bass on it and Mike to play drums on it. And when Mike started playing drums — I remember the first day he came into the studio and he just started playing to this music that I wrote, it just sounded like the two of us. It just was really nostalgic. Even though we didn’t write it together, we weren’t jamming together, we weren’t even in the same room when I was writing it, but there’s just something about that chemistry that creates this magical sound. And one of the things I thought was really awesome with the fans out there was when it came out, it just got such a positive reaction. People were just, like, ‘I’m just so happy that you did this,’ and the music sounds positive and happy. And this was, like, really all during the heart of the whole pandemic. So it was a very good, positive [experience].”
Portnoy walked away from DREAM THEATER in September of 2010 while on tour with AVENGED SEVENFOLD. He has since been replaced by Mike Mangini (ANNIHILATOR, EXTREME, JAMES LABRIE, STEVE VAI).
This past March, Petrucci and Portnoy’s instrumental progressive rock/metal project LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT released their third album, “LTE3”, via InsideOut Music.