Originally published in Metal Hammer magazine (UK) 232 · June 2012
Mike Portnoy interview (excerpt)
InterviewMike Portnoy2 min read
Jerry Ewing: After Dream Theater and the rollercoaster ride of Avenged, and being under the glare of the media spotlight, working with Neal Morse must have felt like the perfect move.
Mike Portnoy: Absolutely. After all that drama it was a blessing. It was personally a very stressful period and it was a lot to handle. So immediately working with Neal, for my first three months after all that, was amazing. We did Testimony II in December, Flying Colors in January and some Yellow Matter Custard shows in February. It was a blessing that I have Neal in my life, because it was just what I needed. He’s such a positive influence on me and my life he was the perfect person.
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JE: Although Flying Colors present the prog/muso side in a more alternative pop vein, Adrenaline Mob seem to have surprised a lot of your fans who were expecting a prog metal kind of thing.
MP: We were never going to make Flying Colors another Transatlantic – Neal and I are already in Transatlantic. And people assumed Adrenaline Mob was going to be Symphony X meets Dream Theater because they saw mine and [Symphony X vocalist] Russell Allen’s names together. We came together to do something totally different to that again. Anybody who had a preconceived idea of these bands was gonna be dead wrong. Adrenaline Mob was always supposed to be more in the vein of bands like Pantera and Disturbed.
JE: Is it a good point in your career to confound expectations?
MP: Exactly. People who expected me to walk away from Dream Theater after 25 years and do something else that sounds like Dream Theater are missing the point. I walked away from that because I want to do different things. I don’t just want to do that for the rest of my life. Anyone who expects me to do another Dream Theater-sounding band is clueless as to why I’m not there to begin with! It’s all about branching out at this point in my life. Adrenaline Mob and Flying Colors and some of the other things I’ve got going on in my life are all very different animals that take me to very different places, and none of them are going to sound like Dream Theater. That’s the whole fucking point!”