In a new interview with Japanese music critic and radio personality Masa Ito of TVK's "Rock City", DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci spoke about the initial fan reception to the band's fifteenth studio album, "A View From The Top Of The World", which came out on October 22 via InsideOut Music/Sony Music. "It's funny. Whenever we make new music, we're not really sure how the audience will accept it or what they'll think of it," he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "But with this album, if you're a DREAM THEATER fan, you're going to like this album. It sounds very much like it's exactly what we do. But it's modern, so it sounds modern, it sounds like the band has definitely progressed and grown, but it sounds so DREAM THEATER. "It's interesting, because some people who have listened to us for a long time, they really want that — they want us to sound like DREAM THEATER sounds — and some people want us to do something totally different," he continued. "So it's sort of strange sometimes with a band. "We've been around for a long time — this is our fifteenth studio album — and I think that for us to do something that sounds this sort of signature of the band was a really great accomplishment and we're really proud of it." The artwork for "A View From The Top Of The World" was created by longtime DREAM THEATER collaborator Hugh Syme (RUSH, IRON MAIDEN, STONE SOUR). DREAM THEATER — comprised of Petrucci, James LaBrie, Jordan Rudess, John Myung and Mike Mangini — was in the middle of a sold-out world tour in support of their last release "Distance Over Time" and the 20th anniversary of "Scenes From A Memory" when a global pandemic brought the world to a stop. The musicians found themselves at home, with LaBrie in Canada and the rest of the group in the States. As fate would have it, they'd just finished construction on DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters) — a combination live recording studio, rehearsal space, control room, equipment storage, and creative hive. With LaBrie in Canada, he initially wrote with the band via Zoom on a monitor in DTHQ. In March 2021, he flew down to New York, quarantined, and recorded his vocals face to face with Petrucci. "A View From The Top Of The World" was produced by Petrucci, with engineering and additional production by James "Jimmy T" Meslin and mixing and mastering by Andy Sneap.
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