Denmark's Revolution-Inc.dk recently conducted an interview with drummer Mike Mangini of progressive metal giants DREAM THEATER. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below. DREAM THEATER's new, self-titled album sold around 34,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 7 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD arrived in stores on September 24 via Roadrunner. DREAM THEATER's previous CD, "A Dramatic Turn Of Events", opened with 36,000 units to land at No. 8. The band's 2009 effort, "Black Clouds & Silver Linings", premiered with 40,000 copies to enter the chart at No. 6. This was roughly in line with the first-week tally registered by its predecessor, "Systematic Chaos", which shifted 36,000 copies in 2007 to debut at No. 19. 2005's "Octavarium" premiered with 27,000 copies to land at No. 36. The nine-track "Dream Theater" disc was recorded at Cove City Studio in Glen Cove, Long Island, with guitarist John Petrucci producing and Richard Chycki engineering and mixing. It's the band's second album with Mike Mangini, and the first one on which he was a part of the writing process from Day One. In a recent interview with The AU Review, DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess stated about having Mangini involved in the songwriting process for the new CD: "Well, it was really interesting having Mangini there for the whole process. One part of the situation was that he's a very upbeat, energized guy, so just having that personality in the room with us was a good experience for all of us. On a musical level, you know, Mike has one of the most incredible rhythmic minds, I think, of anybody. So he was kind of able to conceptualize these kind of concepts that we would just take and try to compose around. We got some really interesting results form doing that it was fascinating for us because everyone in DREAM THEATER has a good sense of rhythm, but we never before in our history have had this kind of input where someone would say, "Petrucci, if you play a bar of seven ten times, and Jordan, if you repeat something in five and I play this, it'll all come together" you know, we would all just smile, because it was some pretty cool wacky stuff that was just purely conceptualized by Mike. And, you know, I guess what helped the most with the writing process was just his drumming you know, having him be there for the writing, so we could try something and have him do his thing on the drums which would lead us to compose differently." Interview (audio);
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