John Petrucci
In the still-youthful genre of prog-metal, Dream Theater are the undisputed silverbacks. Founded 36 years ago in the fertile breeding ground of Berklee College Of Music in Boston, the line-up took the calling cards of classic prog and turned up all the dials, leading the charge for a new movement that made you both bang and scratch your head.
Comprising seven extended tracks, groaning with super-technical solos and pinballing between tricky time signatures, this year’s A View From The Top Of The World album represents everything you love/hate (delete as applicable) about the genre. Co-founding guitarist John Petrucci tells us more.
Undoubtedly you’re pleased with the new album.
I had a feeling when we finished it: “There’s something special about this one.” We started the band in 1985. A View From The Top Of The World is our fifteenth album. People expect bands to slow down. But everybody in Dream Theater is so competitive, always pushing each other. That’s why this crazy stuff comes out. You hear that in the opening track, The Alien. After playing our last show in Glasgow in February 2020, that was the first thing we wrote. And we were so pent-up. With this album we said: no rules. We ended up with a lot of very technical stuff. Lots of epics, longer songs, trading solos…