Talking Into Infinity - A Dream Theater Podcast

We are back talking some Sons Of Apollo on TII! We’ve done our deep dive into Psychotic Symphony, the amazing debut from SOA - Sheehan, Soto, Bumblefoot and, of course  - Sherinian and Portnoy – this time we’re going track by track through their acclaimed sophomore (and, sadly, final) effort MMXX!

With the NFL draft having just taken place, we thought it would be a good idea to have another fantasy football-style song draft on the show – with a twist! This time, we’re ONLY allowed to choose songs from the Mike Mangini era of the band! The only question is… will Breaking All Illusions be the unquestioned #1 draft pick, or is there a sleeper in the cards? We’re on the clock and it’s time to f...

We’re sitting down with our good friend and legendary guitarwriter Steve Rosen to discuss the third edition of his phenomenal Edward Van Halen book Tonechaser – Understanding Edward: My 26-Year Journey With Edward Van Halen and digging into how he made the recently-released audiobook versions come to life! We also touch on Steve’s thoughts about the Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fame and Alex Van Halen’s r...

We are back from our adventures in New York City attendingthe final show of Dream Theater's 40th Anniversary Tour - and not only do we have some stories to tell, but we have some special guests along for the ride! John Raaness of DT Norway will be discussing what goes into setting up theirawesome pre-show fan hangouts, and our good friend Wayne Joyner will be giving us all of the behind-the-sc...

On this episode, we bring on legendary pyrotechnic technician John “Pyro” Watkins to talk about his life on the road with Van Halen, Kiss, Bon Jovi, Journey… just to name a few! We even delve into the Station Nightclub fire and what went so very wrong… John has some incredible stories!

The wait is finally over! Not only do we have a new Dream Theater record to sink our teeth into, but we have our first new music with Mike Portnoy behind the kit in almost fifteen years! On this huge day in DT history, we turn the show over to the fans to get THEIR immediate reactions to the new album Parasomnia!

It’s the next entry in our series of “you can’t have DT”, so… it’s 2007 and you walk into the record store to buy Systematic Chaos… and the clerk tells you that you CAN’T buy it! You HAVE to choose something else… what records are you grabbing? We give OUR choices for what we’d buy when we can’t have what we really want – the new Dream Theater record!

We’re back for our first show of 2025, and we’re bringing back our good friend Paul Logue of Eden’s Curse and James LaBrie’s solo band! After the success of our Empire deep dive, Paul asked if he could come back and talk some Van Halen – twist our arms! Paul chose 1991’s banger For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge – this is one of Jon’s favorite albums, so this promises to be a great discussion about a t...

Gorilla Farts, DT talk, music talk, the fans/viewers/listeners guest-hosting the show… you know the drill! It’s our favorite show of the year – at our favorite time of the year! We’re giving the fans the mic and letting THEM host the show with us and ANY topic is on the table! We’re celebrating the holidays as only TII can with our fourth annual Fan Hangout show! Strap in kids… this could be a lon...

We’re nearing the end of what has probably been the busiest year in DT history – at the very least in terms of news and events for the fans! A new album announcement, two singles, a new live album being recorded – and of course the return of Iron Mike himself; Mike Portnoy! We give our thoughts on the year that was and where we think the future of DT is headed!

With fifteen studio albums under their belts, Dream Theater has a massive catalogue filled with hits, fan favorites… and underrated gems! On this episode, we dig deep into the DT archives to give our lists of the most underrated songs in Dream Theater’s storied history!

It’s spooky season, so we’re each giving our lists of our ten favorite hard rock or heavy metal songs from Halloween movie soundtracks! However, there’s also a lot of news in DT world right now, so we’ll also be running down all of the current topics and giving our thoughts!

We FINALLY have our first taste of the new Dream Theater record, which we now know to be titled Parasomnia! This is a quick announcement to let everyone know to head over to our YouTube channel for a full episode react from our viewers/listeners with Jon and Brian as moderators!

It’s our fifth installment of album song rankings and this time we’re tackling Distance Over Time! Brian and Jon both agree that this is one of DT’s strongest albums – but will they agree on where each song should be ranked from 1 through 10?

We're back with a special episode deep dive into Queensryche's multi-platinum classic Empire! To help us out, we are bringing on friend of show and James Labrie cowriter Paul Logue of Eden's Curse! Everyone is familiar with Jet City Woman and Silent Lucidity - are those tunes the BEST that this incredible record has to offer? Or are the deep cuts where this album makes its bones? We di...

It’s the next entry in our series of “you can’t have DT”, so… it’s 2005 and you walk into the record store to buy Octavarium… and the clerk tells you that you CAN’T buy it! You HAVE to choose something else… what records are you grabbing? We give OUR choices for what we’d buy when we can’t have what we really want – the new Dream Theater record!

Jon recently discovered a list of the top 25 metal albums of all time – and Dream Theater made the cut! It got us thinking… what other albums made the top 25, and are they good choices? We break the list down and give our thoughts on each selection – along with the most metal guest host we could find – the mighty Chris Akin from Chris Akin Presents and The Classic Metal Show!

With Jon having recently attended Sammy Hagar’s Best Of All Worlds tour, it got us thinking… what would WE list as our top ten favorite Van Hagar tracks? We each provide our list – and we’re bringing on Steve Wright, host of the Podder Than Hell podcast to provide us with HIS favorites!

Brian is off tonight, so Jon is rolling solo – with a little help from the viewers/listeners! Brian isn’t as well versed on the live stuff as Jon is, so… tonight we’re digging into the ten live DT releases to see which one comes out on top! Everyone knows that Jon has a soft spot for Score, but… could there be a dark horse candidate waiting in the wings to take the top spot?

It’s the next entry in our series of “you can’t have DT”, so… it’s 2003 and you walk into the record store to buy Train of Thought… and the clerk tells you that you CAN’T buy it! You HAVE to choose something else… what records are you grabbing? We give OUR choices for what we’d buy when wevcan’t have what we really want – the new Dream Theater record!

We’re getting back into the cage for this special non-DT episode of TII! This time, we’re pitting two of the greatest metal albums ever recorded head to head – a pair of Metallica classics! It’s 1986’s Master of Puppets against 1988’s …And Justice For All! Yes, it’s sad but true… we have to pick a winner… (see what we did there?)

We’re back with Part 2 of our Dream Theater album rankings – this time we’re hitting the top halves of our lists as we rank albums 7 through 1! The bottom halves of our lists had some controversial selections – will the top halves be more of the same? It’s time to find out!

Well, we’ve put it off long enough… it’s time to strap our helmets on and go to work. We’re ranking the 15 Dream Theater studio albums in our own personal worst-to-first lists! This is a labor of love and it’ll hurt placing some albums where they’ll eventually be ranked, but it’s gotta be done and let’s face it – DT is like pizza. Even when it isn’t our favorite, it’s still excellent! On this epis...

Loudwire recently released a top albums list that only contains records by the Big Four of prog metal… Queensryche, Opeth, Between the Buried and Me and of course – Dream Theater! We’re going through the list and giving our thoughts on all of their choices… the good, the bad, and the ugly!

DT has finally announced the first leg of their long-awaited reunion tour with Mike Portnoy, beginning with dates over in Europe! We have some thoughts on choosing Europe as the first destination, but we got to thinking… can we guess what their setlist might look like? We take OUR stab at seeing if we can read the band’s minds and play a little game of Guess The Setlist!