Dream Theater's John Petrucci announces new solo album Terminal Velocity

John Petrucci
John Petrucci (Image credit: Daniel Knighton - Getty)

Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci has revealed he’ll release a new solo album later this year.

Terminal Velocity will be his first solo outing since 2005’s Suspended Animation, with Petrucci showing the cover art on his social media channels, saying: “In 2005, there was Suspended Animation. And now, 15 years later, the wait is nearly over.”

Petrucci also shared a short animated video which can be seen below, which features a snippet of music.

The striking cover art, which the guitarist displayed in nine separate Instagram posts, has been created by Sean Mosher-Smith at Echo Designlab.

It will be released this autumn, with further details to follow.

Speaking previously with Guitar World, Petrucci revealed that playing Damage Control from his 2005 album was a challenge live.

He added: “It’s probably one of the more progressive and weaving songs, and it has so many different sections and parts – plus it’s pretty long, so there’s a lot of memorisation. 

“During the night, when that song would come up, it’s like, ‘OK, time to focus!’ The chops have to be really up, and everything needs to be firing on all cylinders. There are so many different themes – it’s almost Dream Theater-esque, the way it departs into the soloing. And, even though the song is an instrumental, there’s sort of an ‘instrumental section.’

“In doing that, it’s going from one part to the next really quickly. There are a lot of angular things happening, so I have to shift techniques really quickly.”

Watch this space.

Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott joined our news desk in the summer of 2014 before moving to the e-commerce team in 2020. Scott maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald, covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott's favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Drab Majesty, Marillion and Rush.