Prog-metal pioneers Dream Theater recently announced their twelfth studio album, which will be self titled. Today, they revealed the album art and track listing via record label Roadrunner. Their album art is usually pretty bare bones, but this is their simplest yet, featuring a chrome version of the Majesty Symbol over a black backdrop with an outline of a planet. Here’s the tracklist:
1. False Awakening Suite
i. Sleep Paralysis
ii. Night Terrors
iii. Lucid Dream
2. The Enemy Inside
3. The Looking Glass
4. Enigma Machine
5. The Bigger Picture
6. Behind the Veil
7. Surrender to Reason
8. Along for the Ride
9. Illumination Theory
i. Paradoxe de la Lumière Noire
ii. Live, Die, Kill
iii. The Embracing Circle
iv. The Pursuit of Truth
v. Surrender, Trust & Passion
This will also be the second album to feature drummer Mike Mangini. Mangini played drums on the last album, but did not compose the drum parts. It will be interesting to hear what he comes up with when he writes drum tracks tailored to his epic drum kit, which has more pieces than anyone can count to, probably. Guitar wizard John Petrucci said this about Mangini’s involvement on the album:
“When people hear the drumming on this album, they’re gonna be pretty freaked out. On the last album, he did a great job, but he wasn’t there for the writing process and he was interpreting drum parts that I had programmed. Even though he used his creativity, of course, to change them up and do his thing, I feel like now he’s just Mike Mangini unleashed. It’s all him. It’s all his creativity, all his decisions and ideas and man, the guy’s an animal.”
The album comes out September 24th from Roadrunner Records, and was produced by Petrucci.
