UMUR "Parasomnia" is the fifteenth full-length studio album by US progressive metal act Dream Theater. The album was released through InsideOut Music in February 2025. It´s the successor to "A View from the Top of the World" from 2021. There´s been one lineup change since the predecessor as original drummer Mike Portnoy has returned to the fold replacing Mike Mangini, who had held Portnoy´s seat warm since 2011, where Portoy left to concentrate on other projects. Although the split with Mangini was amicable, he was in fact fired to make room for Portnoy´s return.

Portnoy was always much more than "just" the drummer in Dream Theater as an integral part of the songwriting team and the production team, and also as one of the most active band members when it came to media interviews, and his return to Dream Theater has made huge waves on the progressive metal scene. "Parasomnia" has as a result been an even more highly anticipated new release from Dream Theater than usual (and it´s not like every Dream Theater album before this one haven´t been met with almost hysterical level fan expectations and media attention). They are indeed the most well known and respected progressive metal band in the world...

Stylistically "Parasomnia" is one of the darker and heavier releases in Dream Theater´s discography along with albums like "Awake" (1994) and "Train of Thought" (2003). But albums like "Metropolis, Part 2: Scenes From a Memory" (1999) and "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" (2002) are valid references too if you want something from the band´s past to compare "Parasomnia" to. It´s like the band have consciously looked back at their turn-of-the-century albums and have found inspiration there for this album. At this point James LaBrie doesn´t sing that many really high notes though and it´s probably a good idea that Dream Theater have composed the material to accommodate LaBrie´s voice. He can still sing and he has a distinct sounding voice, which suits Dream Theater´s sound well, but age and years of touring the world have taken a toll on his ability to hit the high notes (which is audible when you attend a Dream Theater concert these days). While it´s not LaBrie´s fault, it doesn´t help make the vocal part of "Parasomnia" more interesting and varied if you compare it to some of the band´s earlier releases, but of course that´s been a tendency for now many albums, so it shouldn´t come as a surprise to anyone.

Other than that Dream Theater are as well playing as ever. Four virtuoso instrumentalists in the same band writing and playing complex progressive metal is always worth the price of admission, but honestly the incredible musicianship doesn´t mask the fact that the songwriting could need some focus and attention. Even better an outside producer would be nice at this point (guitarist John Petrucci is again credited for producing), weeding out some of the less interesting parts and making the band focus on and develop upon some of the amazing songwriting ideas this album also features. While songs like "Night Terror" and "Midnight Messiah" are immediately catchy and memorable, it takes quite some time to get familiar with the remaining material, because it´s either not as hook laden or sometimes have a tendency to wander off into noodly territory, which of course is what we expect from Dream Theater, but it often feels like the technical playing isn´t a means to an end (read: an integral part of the composition), but just there because the band knows that this is what the fans expect.

The sound production is overall well sounding, heavy, and detailed, and it´s not surprising to learn that Andy Sneap is responsible for mixing and mastering "Parasomnia". There´s a heavy metallic tone to the album, which suits the material well. Upon conclusion "Parasomnia" is an album which leaves me biased when rating it. On one hand it´s probably exactly what most Dream Theater fans expected and wanted, but as a more casual fan it would have been nice if Portnoy´s return had brought some of the 1990s Dream Theater greatness with it...but it really doesn´t. This is just another high quality progressive metal release from Dream Theater in a long line of relatively similar sounding but still high quality post-2000 releases from the band. The only time they´ve truly challenged themselves since the early 2000s was with the release of "The Astonishing" (2016), but I guess the fan reactions (mine included) to that album made them think twice about ever experimenting with their core sound again.

While my review may come off as a bit harsh and negative, it should not be misunderstood as if I don´t think "Parasomnia" is a high quality release, because it certainly is. The dream/nightmare lyrical themes which grace all tracks on the album is also well thought out and implemented, and when all is said and done "Parasomnia" is overall a strong release from Dream Theater. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

Warthur Talk about your dramatic turns of events! With Mike Portnoy returning to Dream Theater out of the blue and Mike Mangini bowing out with good grace (so far as we can tell), expectations where high for this album. It's not that the Mangini era of the band is outright bad, so much as it's rather mixed; A Dramatic Turn of Events was pretty solid, but their self-titled album was less celebrated and The Astonishing met with a serious backlash.

Notably, with the latter they abandoned their usual full-band collaborative approach to songwriting, Petrucci and Rudess handling all the music themselves and Petrucci writing the lyrics solo, further contributing to the sense that the well-honed Dream Theater creative engine wasn't quite working as it should. Then again, Distance Over Time and A View From the Top of the World seemed to find the band back on an upward swing - the question was, would the return of Portnoy reinvigorate the band or disrupt them just as their creative process was recovering from the weird experiment of The Astonishing?

Before you even get to the music here, you're confronted with cover art that seems designed specifically to build high expectations. Sure, it's a spookier, gloomier image than we've become used to from Dream Theater (though not so much that it feels completely uncharacteristic), but what really jumps out about it is that it's a big riff on the Images and Words cover; we've got an older girl stood next to her bed, and whilst the surreal features of the Images and Words cover suggested the colourful imagery of dream, here we're stepping more into the realm of nightmare.

So not only is this Portnoy's big comeback, but it's being set up as this big thematic sequel to the band's breakthrough album - if Images and Words was Songs of Innocence, this is Songs of Experience. Lyrically and thematically, this continues right into the album itself; "Parasomnia" is a term for a particular category of sleep disorders, and the songs here are all about sleep paralysis, nightmares, and other things of that nature. It's not a narrative concept album so far as I can tell, but it's definitely a thematic one, with the band taking us all on a thrilling trip through the realm of nightmare.

If the album's cover and lyrics showcase thematic unity, the credits suggest the return of the fivefold creative partnership responsible for the success of this lineup's successful run from Metropolis Part II to Black Clouds & Silver Linings. To the extent that Mangini got credits for songwriting, he did because Dream Theater typically share the credit for all of their musical compositions and generally only go for individual credits when it comes to song lyrics - which Mangini notably contributed much less of than Portnoy had. Portnoy's back on the lyrics again here, and one can only assume that he's settled back into making contributions to the musical compositions too, since all five men in this lineup had become well-used to workshopping ideas with each other.

All of this show of unity and co-operation would come to nothing if the music didn't hold together of course, and I'm happy to report that this is a decidedly strong Dream Theater album. It's not on the level of albums I'd personally put on the absolute tippy-top tier of the band's output - Images & Words, Metropolis Part II, and Octavarium - but it's a decidedly solid effort which refreshes their customary style with the combination of a well-defined and tightly targeted atmosphere and mood on the one hand, and on the other an injection of a few more gleeful retro-prog influences into the mix than we've heard on recent albums from the group.

One suspects Portnoy may have had a hand in that, given that he'd spent much of his time away from the group working with Neal Morse (both on Morse's own projects as bandleader and in more collaborative contexts like Transatlantics), and anyone who's that keen to keep contributing to Neal's prog projects probably has a healthy appetite for old-school prog stuff, but at the same time this isn't so much of a divergence from A View From the Top of the World as to represent an outright repudiation of that album, or the Mangini era as a whole.

Really, my biggest criticism of it is the needless Images and Words nod on the front cover - I think it's silly of the band to implicitly invite such comparisons when this isn't really a throwback to that era. The group aren't rewinding the clock here or pretending the last few albums didn't happen - they aren't hopping back to a pre-Mangini period, it's more like Mangini tagging out and Portnoy tagging in back in, the group carrying the lessons learned forward. It remains to be seen whether this new era of the band will have the staying power of the last time this particular lineup was all together - like I said, the Mangini era did start strong before it got into the weeds a little - but whilst this isn't a revolution in the band's sound, it's still a promising start.