Dream Theater dropped a new heavy song ‘A Broken Man’ from their upcoming album, ‘Parasomnia.’
“We are proud to release ‘A Broken Man,’ the second single from our new album ‘Parasomnia,’ which highlights sleep disturbances related to wartime PTSD often faced by our veterans,” the band announced the song on Instagram. “Watch the visualizer created by Wayne Joyner, link in bio!”
‘Parasomnia’ will arrive on February 7, 2025. This will be the band’s first album with drummer Mike Portnoy since 2009’s ‘Black Clouds & Silver Linings.’
‘A Broken Man’ starts with strong music, then softens as James LaBrie sings about a war vet struggling with nightmares and insomnia. The song includes real audio from vets talking about their traumatic wartime experiences.
‘Parasomnia’ was produced by guitarist John Petrucci, engineered by James ‘Jimmy T’ Meslin, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme created the cover art again.
‘Parasomnia’ refers to sleep-related issues like sleepwalking and night terrors and runs about 71 minutes. The record has eight new songs. Besides two released songs, ‘Night Terror’ and ‘A Broken Man,’ other songs are ‘In The Arms of Morpheus,’ ‘Dead Asleep,’ ‘Midnight Messiah,’ ‘Are We Dreaming?’ ‘Bend The Clock,’ and ‘The Shadow Man Incident.’
“It’s actually the first song we wrote together once we started the sessions,” Portnoy recently told Eddie Trunk about ‘Night Terror.’ “So, you know, not only did we feel it would be a good first thing for people to hear, it made sense because it was the first thing we wrote. So, after 13 years of not writing anything together, this was it. This was the first thing that came out of us.”
The drummer added, “And it is indicative of, I think, the whole album. I think the whole album’s got a lot of stuff that Dream Theater fans are just gonna love. You know, it’s got a little bit of everything in it. The songs are epic. We also have a 20-minute epic on the album, and ‘Night Terror’ is about 10 minutes, and there’s another one that’s about 11 minutes.”
“It’s what you would expect from us. It’s kind of just picking up from where we left off as if no time has passed,” he concluded.
South American leg of Dream Theater’s 40th anniversary tour continues. Their next show is in Mexico City, Mexico on December 7.
