Dream Theater
Explore the band's historical lineups, musicians, and studio albums.
Active7 formations16 studio albums
Formation chronology
Newest first
Formation 7 of 7
Oct 25, 2023 – Present
Members
- James LaBrieVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Jordan RudessKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- Portnoy played drums on Petrucci’s solo album Terminal Velocity, then recorded Liquid Tension Experiment 3 with Rudess and bassist Tony Levin. In 2022 he and James LaBrie met backstage in New York after more than a decade apart. On October 25, 2023, Dream Theater announced Portnoy’s return.
- Petrucci first heard the word “parasomnia” from his son and kept it as a possible album title. Sleep disturbances such as night terrors, sleepwalking, and sleep paralysis gave the lyrics a dark thread. Portnoy then pushed to make the music conceptual as well, using recurring themes to tie the album together.
- “Night Terror” was the first song written after Portnoy rejoined, and Dream Theater released it first so listeners would hear the energy of those sessions. The Recording Academy nominated it for Best Metal Performance at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Studio albums
- Parasomnia (Feb 2025)
Formation 6 of 7
2011 – Oct 24, 2023
Members
- James LaBrieVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Jordan RudessKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike ManginiDrums
Formation facts
- After Portnoy left, Dream Theater filmed a New York audition of seven drummers for a documentary later released as The Spirit Carries On. Mike Mangini, then a full-time professor at Berklee College of Music, was chosen as the new drummer and left that teaching post to join the band.
- Petrucci said A Dramatic Turn of Events was written from a sense of responsibility to fans after Portnoy’s departure, not as an attack on him. The opening track, “On the Backs of Angels,” brought Dream Theater its first Grammy nomination.
- The Astonishing is a two-hour, thirty-four-track rock opera set in a future where music itself has been automated. Petrucci built the story after noticing how many human jobs were disappearing to machines and asking what would happen if music went the same way.
- For Distance Over Time, the five musicians lived together for the first time in the band’s career, writing and recording at the Yonderbarn, a converted barn studio in upstate New York. The close quarters produced a heavier, more direct set of songs than the sprawling opera that came before.
- When the pandemic halted Dream Theater’s Scenes from a Memory anniversary tour, the band began work on A View From The Top of The World at its new Long Island facility, DTHQ. LaBrie, still in Canada, wrote with the others over Zoom, then flew to New York, quarantined, and recorded his vocals in person. The album’s opening track, “The Alien,” became Dream Theater’s first Grammy win.
Studio albums
- A View From The Top of The World (Oct 2021)
- Distance Over Time (Feb 2019)
- The Astonishing (Jan 2016)
- Dream Theater (Sep 2013)
- A Dramatic Turn of Events (Sep 2011)
Formation 5 of 7
Feb 1999 – Sep 8, 2010
Members
- James LaBrieVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Jordan RudessKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- After Falling Into Infinity disappointed commercially, Elektra gave Dream Theater free rein on the next record. They expanded the leftover Metropolis sequel into Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, a concept album about a man named Nicholas uncovering a past life, inspired more by the film Dead Again than by the original song.
- On the New York date of the Scenes from a Memory tour, Dream Theater hired actors to play the album’s characters onstage while the band performed the story. The Roseland Ballroom concert was filmed and released as Metropolis 2000: Scenes from New York.
- Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence was Dream Theater’s first double studio album. The entire second disc is the forty-two-minute title piece, an eight-part work about six people living with different forms of mental illness.
- Portnoy used his experience with sobriety and the twelve-step recovery process as the basis for a sequence of songs spread across five Dream Theater albums. The suite begins with “The Glass Prison” and ends with “The Shattered Fortress.” He later said the twelve steps were too large a subject for one song, so he carried the idea from album to album.
- After seeing audiences respond strongly to Dream Theater’s heavier material on tour, the band made Train of Thought a deliberately heavy record and wrote it in three weeks. Petrucci wrote “As I Am” after Queensrÿche’s guitarist, during a co-headline run, gave him unsolicited advice about his playing.
- Octavarium was the last album recorded at New York’s Hit Factory before the studio closed. It was also the first Dream Theater studio album to use a real orchestra. In 2006 the band celebrated its twentieth anniversary at Radio City Music Hall with an orchestra performing during the second half of the concert, later released as Score.
- Portnoy wrote “The Best of Times” about his father, Howard, while Howard was dying of cancer, and managed to play him the song before he died. He later said he wanted the tribute to cover their life together, not only the illness.
- In 2010 Portnoy told the rest of Dream Theater he needed a hiatus. He had founded the band and was burned out from years of writing, recording, and touring without a real break. The others wanted to keep working, and rather than make them wait he left, saying he would not stand in their way.
Studio albums
- Black Clouds & Silver Linings (Jun 2009)
- Systematic Chaos (Jun 2007)
- Octavarium (Jun 2005)
- Train of Thought (Nov 2003)
- Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (Jan 2002)
- Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (Oct 1999)
Formation 4 of 7
Feb 1995 – Jan 1999
Members
- James LaBrieVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Derek SherinianKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- A Change of Seasons finally appeared in 1995 as an EP: the twenty-three-minute title piece plus live covers. Portnoy said they labeled it an EP so it would not be mistaken for the next Dream Theater studio album. It was also the band’s first release with Derek Sherinian.
- Elektra Records pressed Dream Theater toward shorter, radio-friendly songs. The band spent more than a year writing without approval to record, and the frustration grew severe enough that they discussed ending the group. When they were finally allowed into the studio they had enough material for a double album, and the label limited the release to one disc for budget reasons.
- Kevin Shirley produced Falling Into Infinity and made large changes to some of the arrangements. He also recommended that the band work with Desmond Child, a commercially successful songwriter known for hits such as Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” Petrucci flew to Florida and reworked “You Or Me” with Child into “You Not Me.”
- Among the songs left off Falling Into Infinity was a twenty-one-minute instrumental sequel to the earlier song “Metropolis Pt. 1.” When the label later gave Dream Theater more creative freedom, that abandoned “Metropolis Pt. 2” demo became the seed of Scenes from a Memory.
- Portnoy and Petrucci formed Liquid Tension Experiment, an instrumental group with Jordan Rudess and bassist Tony Levin. Playing with Rudess convinced them he was the keyboardist they wanted, five years after he had declined a full-time offer following one 1994 show. In 1999 they parted with Sherinian and asked Rudess again.
Studio albums
- Falling Into Infinity (Sep 1997)
Formation 3 of 7
Jan 1991 – 1994
Members
- James LaBrieVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Kevin MooreKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- After Charlie Dominici left, Dream Theater auditioned nearly two hundred singers. A cassette from Kevin James LaBrie, then the singer in the Canadian band Winter Rose, won him a New York tryout. He flew there in January 1991, on the day the United States launched Operation Desert Storm. After a short jam the band hired him, and he began using James so the lineup would not have two Kevins.
- Images and Words was not expected to break through in a market that had turned toward grunge. The eight-minute “Pull Me Under” still reached MTV and a Billboard Mainstream Rock top ten, and it remains Dream Theater’s only top-ten radio single.
- Dream Theater originally intended Images and Words as a double album. ATCO Records rejected that plan, and “A Change of Seasons” was among the songs left off. Portnoy had written the piece after his mother’s death, and the band later re-recorded it for an EP.
- EastWest Records, Dream Theater’s label, pushed the band to follow “Pull Me Under” with another radio single. The answer was Awake, a darker, heavier album written under that pressure in New York. Petrucci used a seven-string guitar on a Dream Theater record for the first time, and Kevin Moore told the others he was leaving while the album was still being finished.
- In December 1994, severe food poisoning during a trip to Cuba caused James LaBrie to vomit so violently that his vocal cords began bleeding. Doctors told him to stop singing for months, but with tour dates already scheduled he returned to the stage against their advice.
Studio albums
- Awake (Oct 1994)
- Images and Words (Jul 1992)
Formation 2 of 7
Nov 1987 – 1989
Members
- Charlie DominiciVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Kevin MooreKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- Another band already named Majesty threatened legal action, so the group needed a new name. Mike Portnoy’s father, Howard, suggested Dream Theater after a movie theater in Monterey, California, where Portnoy had spent summers watching films.
- Mechanic Records, an MCA label, signed the renamed band. Dream Theater recorded When Dream and Day Unite during the summer of 1988 at Kajem/Victory Studios in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, where Queensrÿche had recorded Operation: Mindcrime. Released in 1989, it is Dream Theater’s only studio album with Charlie Dominici on vocals.
- Dream Theater expected When Dream and Day Unite to create some buzz. Instead, the album went largely unnoticed, Mechanic/MCA cut ties with the band, and the supporting tour amounted to only a small run of New York-area club shows. Tensions and creative differences ended the partnership with Dominici later in 1989.
- Dominici remained close to his former bandmates after the split. He fronted the band that played at Mike Portnoy’s 1994 wedding, returned to the Dream Theater stage for the debut album’s fifteenth-anniversary show in 2004, and opened for Dream Theater in Europe with his own band in 2007.
Studio albums
- When Dream and Day Unite (Mar 1989)
Formation 1 of 7
1986 – Nov 1986
Members
- Chris CollinsVocals
- John PetrucciGuitar
- Kevin MooreKeyboards
- John MyungBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- John Petrucci and John Myung arrived at Berklee College of Music in Boston looking for players who cared about progressive rock and metal. They heard Mike Portnoy in a practice room, recognized overlapping tastes that included Rush, and started jamming together in 1985.
- Waiting in line for Rush tickets at Berklee, they put on Caress of Steel. Portnoy called the ending of “Bastille Day” majestic, and the three named the new group Majesty.
- Majesty spent hours writing and rehearsing each night while Petrucci, Myung, and Portnoy were still students at Berklee. Myung later recalled that they planned to return for another year, then realized school would take time away from the band, so all three left Berklee to concentrate on Majesty.
- Petrucci’s schoolmate Kevin Moore joined on keyboards. After auditions, Chris Collins became the singer, and the five-piece recorded The Majesty Demos, a 1986 cassette they played New York-area shows behind while still using the Majesty name.