Mike Portnoy has never been one to stray away from a new project. The countless bands he’s worked with have spanned a huge genre spectrum, demonstrating his immense talent if we weren’t already sold on it. Portnoy has a lot going on right now – he played on the Neal Morse album The Great Experiment that debuted this week and just played the Shiprocked Concert Cruise at the beginning of this month. On top of all of that, he still managed to have to time to start what he’s calling his “full-blown first full-on metal album.”

Portnoy sat down with Mike Portnoy Warriors to discuss his current projects, and filled them in on this mysterious metal project. He said:

“There’s another album I just finished the drums and the writing on, and it’s my full-blown first full-on metal album. We wrote it in December and January, and I tracked my drums in January, and we’re about to do the guitar and bass tracks next week.”

He goes on to explain that if you’ve had your eye open on Twitter, you know who he’s been writing with. A tweet from January gives it away pretty bluntly, as Portnoy posted a picture of himself with Alex Skolnik of Testament and Dave Ellefson of Megadeth with the caption, “MP, @AlexSkolnick & @ellefsondavid – this would be a pretty kickass metal band, dontcha think??? : ) \m/”. He told Mike Portnoy Warriors that those three members wrote the album together and that from there, “the project and the band and the album will continue to evolve.”

We first heard of this project last month, when Portnoy took to Facebook to talk about laying down the “most brutal drum performance of my career!” quite excitedly. It should be interesting to see how this project turns out, especially since Portnoy is clearly so stoked about it.