James LaBrie Update!

Now that James LaBrie has finished his second Mullmuzzler album, simply called James LaBrie’s Mullmuzzler 2, set for an August release on Magna Carta, work will commence on the next Dream Theater spread.

Here’s James talking about the plans for his main band through the rest of ‘01, into ‘02. “The next album is being recorded at BearTracks in New York, once again, where we did Images And Words, ‘A Change Of Seasons’, and Scenes From A Memory. Right now we’re in the writing process and I’m not going to be doing vocals until the end of July, going into the beginning of August and we’re hoping to mix in September and then have it out in January 2002 and then immediately follow it up with another world tour. But you know, we did this on purpose. We took a bit of a break because we’ve been going pretty crazy since 1991 and when the last tour ended, it ended October 21st in London, England. Leading up to that date, we discussed taking a nice break and we figured, oh, 15 months would be nice. [laughs] But it’s not that much of a break. You have to think, we’re not sitting around doing nothing, because in the interim I wrote and recorded another Mullmuzzler and then those guys were doing clinics, Mike and John and Jordan, and then we had to get our heads around writing another Dream Theater album. And I guess you’re aware that John Petrucci is going on the G3 tour this year. So it’s not like when we go out next January we’ll be sitting around going ‘wow man, that was a nice 15 months off.’ We’ve kept extremely busy on other things. We did think it would be advantageous for us to not be around for 2001, just to be out of the public eye, no new album, no tour so that in 2002 we could come out and there will be a little bit of excitement and people are maybe a little more ecstatic to see us once again on the road with a new album.”

What about direction differences. subtle or not so subtle shifts for the next album?

“Well I can tell you, for now, like always, we don’t like to go too far into it, but it’s definitely going to be heavier and it’s going to be an incredibly progressive album once again. People are going to appreciate that there are a lot of heavy elements going on in it. So it’s pretty epic, but I’m not saying there’s one song that represents the whole album but there is some pretty ripping stuff as far as aggression goes. And that doesn’t mean I’m going to be roaring my vocals, but there will be a lot of power coming from the instruments and my voice. So that’s good. And I think it’s a natural progression for us to come from an album like Scenes From A Memory and go in this direction and hit people over their heads again. Because I think we’re more perceived as a progressive metal band that we are progressive rock, so I think this is good. We’re pretty excited and it’s not a concept album this time. I think we’ve taken that as far as we can go right now in our careers.”

With respect to the Mullmuzzler album, James had this comment. “With the first one, I think people were pretty open to hearing what I had to present to them for the first time, where I was going, what style. With this one I wanted to approach people with something that was obviously rock, had a lot of groove and a lot of feel and a lot of expression, obviously vocally. And I wanted the songs to be, without selling out, I wanted them to be something you can grab onto immediately, more accessible, but still keep it very interesting and somewhat intricate and complex at times, especially with something like the opening track. With this one, I think there is a little more diversity and it’s very colourful. You go from progressive tracks to hard rock tracks and obviously your slower songs. I don’t like to refer to them as ballads, but I’m sure a lot of people will. I wanted to offer a wider perspective where I was coming from individually, totally separate from Dream Theater. It doesn’t make sense for me to do this if I’m going to sound exactly like another Dream Theater album. which would be foolish for me because you just can’t do that. That has its own chemistry. I just wanted to show people some other styles of music that I find exciting, take them down that road.”