Battle Plan: Dream Theater

After a 28-year career, prog metal group Dream Theater released its 12th album and first self-titled LP on Roadrunner Records. It bows at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.

3 Months Ago

On June 6, Dream Theater announced that its 12th album would be self-titled. “With 11 studio albums under their belt, self-titling their 12th is a pretty big statement,” Roadrunner senior director of marketing Suzi Akyuz says. “It’s basically declaring that this is the quintessential Dream Theater album.” Teasing audio and video content ahead of release, the band put out the first of four in-studio videos on June 6 and an in-studio photo gallery on June 20, yielding the highest traffic day of the year for the label’s website. In July, the act posted the album cover and track list, and held a listening party on July 30 at New York’s Germano Studios.

1 Month Ago

The band premiered single “The Enemy Inside” on USAToday.com on Aug. 5. “It ended up being the day’s second-most-popular story for the website’s Life section,” Akyuz says. The label also released a lyric video the same day on all Dream Theater/Roadrunner properties and coordinated a pre-order on Aug. 7, offering four configurations. “We did a limited-edition collector’s boxed set, two-LP gatefold vinyl, a special edition [digital release] that included a bonus disc of a 5.1 audio mix of the album and the standard edition,” Akyuz says. The label also shared album art from the booklet through Instagram every weekend starting Aug. 9.

Release Week

Second single “Along for the Ride” premiered Sept. 9 through Grammy.com’s “First Listen,” and the band allowed its first album stream, which launched Sept. 16 on RollingStone.com. “We hadn’t done something like this with Dream Theater before,” Akyuz says. “We got such a great, positive response from fans.” The video for “The Enemy Inside” bowed on Billboard.com on street date, and the group’s Roadrunner catalog was made available at online retailer HD Tracks. “That’s an outlet that’s very important to us, because high-quality audio is hugely important to their fans.” The album sold 34,000 first-week copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Next Up

Dream Theater finished a weeklong contest with Super Glued at the close of release week, earning more than 33,000 social actions completed by fans. The label will ship “The Enemy Inside” to rock radio on Oct. 15, marking the band’s first radio impact date since “Pull Me Under” in 1992. Roadrunner has also planned for the instrumental “Enigma Machine” to be choreographed by New York’s Ballet Deviare for a video project. “They’re this contemporary ballet company that choreographs their dances to heavy music,” Akyuz says. The group will tour Europe in January and February, then stateside in the spring.

—Nick Williams