Dream Theater's James LaBrie Will Be 'Extremely Frickin’ Upset' If They Don't Get To Aus Soon

American progressive metal gods Dream Theater are known for their ridiculously hard-working and prolific approach to their career. Looking back across their history, you see their story beginning way back in 1985 before releasing their debut album When Dream & Day Unite four years later. In the ensuing three decades, the band has not once gone more than four years without giving their fans a brand new album, a simply astonishing feat. It’s not like their albums are rush jobs either, each record has brought something brand fresh to the table, musically, lyrically and narratively, on top of the illustrious levels of musicianship and songcraft they are so famous for.

And so the relentless cycle continues. The band is set to release their new record Distance Over Time, just a smidge over three years since the release of their last album The Astonishing. When asked if the statement 'putting out quality, in quantity' is fair, ever-affable frontman James LaBrie laughs heartily and says, “I guess so! The way you put it, I’m not going to argue.”

Turning more serious for a moment, he goes on to say, “This is our fourteenth album, and I think what’s always been our motto is to just see what we can do next. Let’s keep it fresh, let’s keep it exciting, and not only our fans, but let’s keep ourselves intrigued and totally enamoured with it all.” When pressed to expand further on their seemingly inexhaustible motivation to create, LaBrie shares, “We’ve kind of been on a cycle, maybe every two years, the way we’ve gone about things, give or take. That’s the way we’ve always done it, we go in, write the album, then we tour for a year and a half, then we take six months off, and then we get back in, write another album, boom boom,” he says, making it all sound so easy.

"That’s the way we’ve always done it, we go in, write the album, then we tour for a year and a half, then we take six months off, and then we get back in, write another album, boom boom.”

The punishing writing schedule begs the question, where does all this music come from? The answer lies in the fact that all five members are highly creative forces in their own right, and when they get together, the juices never fail to flow. In fact, the cup is always overflowing. “We’re never short on ideas,” he states modestly. “You would be amazed at how much stuff is in the vaults that has never seen the light of day. It’s unbelievable. And it might just be little snippets here and there, riffs here, ideas there for a minute or two, and then it just never seems to see the light of day.”

LaBrie is only too happy to give some insight into how some of the threads of the new album were pieced together in this manner. “When we went in to do this album, there were a few moments when there were seeds,” he recalls. “There were seeds for Pale Blue Dot, there were seeds for Fall Into The Light, and even something like Signal To Noise, it was funny because that song was the last song that was written, but the first song that was visited. It was a riff that [bassist] John Myung came into the studio with. He started playing it, and we were like, ‘That’s really cool!’ But the way it went down, we started to work on it, and someone else hit another riff and we all said, ‘We can make that into a new song!’ So all of a sudden, John’s riff gets pushed back.

“It’s so funny, because we came back and we were like, ‘Ok, we’ve got one more song to write and that’ll be the album. Ok John, what was that riff again?’” He laughs again, “So we started wailing on that riff and stayed focused on it 'til it was done.”

No stranger to our shores, LaBrie is extremely keen to see the band return to Australia at some stage on the Distance Over Time tour. “I sure hope so, if not I’m going to be extremely frickin’ upset,” he states forcefully, “We’ve got a US tour starting in March, then we’ve got a seven-week festival tour in Europe throughout June and July, so I’m hoping that come September, we’ll be hitting the Southern Pacific Rim and that would be our perfect opportunity to going in to Australia.”