progressive metal giants DREAM THEATER played their cover of the holiday classic “O Holy Night” during their December 22 concert at Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile. According to Setlist.fmthis marked DREAM THEATER‘s first performance of the track since 1998. Fan-filmed video of the Santiago show can be seen below.
In 2021, DREAM THEATER‘s official YouTube channel uploaded the band’s cover of “O Holy Night”. The track was recorded during a soundcheck at the Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon on June 9, 1993 and was released three years later on a very rare fan-club-only Christmas CD.
In 2020, DREAM THEATER released a medley of holiday classics called “The Holiday Spirit Carries On”. The proceeds of the song, which was made available via bandcampwent to support the band’s road crew which was unable to work that year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
DREAM THEATER recently completed the European leg of the band’s 40th-anniversary tour. The trek — presented as “An Evening With Dream Theater” — kicked off on October 20 at the O2 Arena in London, United Kingdom, marking the progressive metal legends’ first concert with drummer Mike Portnoy in 14 years, and ran through November 24 in Amsterdam, hitting cities in numerous countries along the way.
In a video message, DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci stated about the trek: “It’s been going incredibly. We started out in Europe. First show was the O2 in London, and that really set the tone. It’s been absolutely amazing. The fans are, like, losing their minds. I look out every night and I see these packed, sold-out venues of people with smiles on their faces.
“It’s been so cool having Mike Portnoy rejoin the band,” he continued. “I mean, obviously, we started the band together. We met when we were 18 years old, so when I look back and I see him playing drums, it’s just like having my old buddy back in. And so there’s a great feeling on stage.”
Petrucci also touched upon DREAM THEATER‘s upcoming sixteenth studio album, “Parasomnia”which will arrive on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks the band’s first release with Portnoy since 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”. The LP’s first single,“Night Terror”came out in October and was described in a press release as “a musical thrill ride captured in the just shy of ten minutes listening experience.”
” ‘Night Terror’ you have been really cool to play live,”John he said. “It’s one of these songs — we open the second set with it and it just starts out so epic and so dramatic. And what I love is this setlist has a lot of nostalgic tracks on it. And when we play a brand new track next to a song that, that was released on our second album, whatever, the audience response is just as amazing. So I love seeing just such a great response to new music.
” ‘Night Terror’ is one of the tracks on the album‘Parasomnia’“I added.” ‘Parasomnia’ is the perfect title for a band called DREAM THEATER because parasomnia is a general term for sleep disorders. And it could mean night terrors, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, all these kinds of weird things that happen. So the album has everything to do with that, and it comes out on February 7th. We’re really excited about it.”
Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with Petrucci and bassist John Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989’s “When Dream And Day Unite” through 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”before exiting the group in 2010. Portnoy returned to DREAM THEATER in October 2023 after being replaced by Mike Manginiwho played with DREAM THEATER across five studio albums and accompanying world tours.
“Parasomnia” was produced by Petrucciengineered by James “Jimmy T” Meslinand mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme returns once again to lend his creative vision to the cover art.
In a recent interview with “Coffee With Ola”, Portnoy was asked how it feels to be back in DREAM THEATER after a 13-year absence. I responded: “It feels great. I mean, it’s funny because for the whole world, they’re just starting to see the reunion now, but we’ve been together for a year behind the scenes. So it’s been over a year for us behind the scenes and making the new record, but it’s only now in the past couple weeks since the [40th-anniversary European] tour began and since the first music video [from the upcoming DREAM THEATER album] came out that people are actually seeing us back together again. But for us, it’s, like, it’s old news… It is exciting, though. And you could feel the excitement and the love and the emotions at every show. And every night [DREAM THEATER singer] James [LaBrie] welcomes me back on from stage. And it’s been overwhelming, the amount of love and everyone being so welcoming back and everything.”
During the same chat, Petrucci talked about “Night Terror”saying: “There was some back and forth as to what single we should lead with, and ‘Night Terror’ is the first song that we wrote together. When we got together, that’s what came out of us. And so, for us, yeah, maybe there are songs that are a little bit more immediate to the general fanbase, but for us, we felt it was important that the first thing that people heard is, ‘Listen, this is what DREAM THEATER es. This is the first thing we wrote. This identifies all the stuff that everyone loves about the band and showcases Mike.’ I always said that opening fill before the guitar riff that Mike does, that fill is like, ‘I’m back.’ [Laughs] ‘In case you missed me.’ And I think he did that in one take. It was, like, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s the signature.'”
Regarding what it felt like to be writing and recording with DREAM THEATER again, Portnoy said: “To be back with these guys, it feels really special. It feels like family, really, honestly. John and me and DREAM THEATER bassist] John Myung have been playing together almost 40 years at this point. We formed the band when we were teenagers and met at college, the first month of college. So, for us, it’s deeper than just being in a band together. We’ve been through life together. We met our wives together, our wives played in a band together, we ad our families at the same time, we’ve been to the funerals of each other’s parents and siblings and things like that. So, we’ve been through all these life experiences together. It goes beyond just the music for us. All that being said, it also, at least to me, felt like no time had passed. It didn’t feel like 13 years. Once we started writing together, it felt so natural and so fresh. ‘Night Terror’ It was the first thing we worked on, and it just came out so naturally. There wasn’t much thought needed to go into it. It was, like, ‘Okay, here we are where we just left off.'”
John chimed in: “It’s tough to explain. For anyone out there who has been in bands with their friends, you almost have like an unspoken language, like someone plays something, I know what he means when he plays it and I respond and vice versa So it’s, like, immediately the songs just developed and grew in such a natural and organic way.
On the topic of “Parasomnia”which DREAM THEATER previously said had a conceptual theme but not a concept album, John said: “Without giving too much of a way, because we always like to keep the mystery, but I think this has been said before, the album’s called‘Parasomnia’and for those people who don’t know what that is, it kind of encompasses a broad range of sleep disturbances, and that could range from snoring to some scarier things, like sleepwalking and night terrors, false awakenings and things like that are actually really very frightening for the people that it happens to. So, much in the way that [2002’s] ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence’ had a lyrical theme to it where there were different case studies having to do with challenges of mental illness and stuff like that, ‘Parasomnia’ is sort of the sleep disturbance version of that, but in an entire record, as opposed to just a song “
