Grammy winning Dream Theater discuss upcoming "energetic" UK live dates

Dream Theater pose on top of a skyscraper — (Image credit: Rayon Richards)

Dream Theater are set to appear across the UK this month in support of their acclaimed A View From The Top Of The World album. It follows a successful North American tour which culminated in a Grammy award win for the best metal performance, with their track The Alien.

“When we started the American leg, it was a bit scary in the sense that it seemed like a lot of people were going to stay home because of what’s going on in the world,” says keyboard player Jordan Rudess. “What we found was that, after the first week, everybody started to come out. It ended up being really great. What was really interesting about it was that the audience had more energy than usual. Everybody was so excited to be getting back to see live music and seeing Dream Theater after so long.

"We were riding on this wave on energy that we didn’t necessarily expect. I get the feeling that people in Europe are also almost waiting to see if we’re really coming. But we are coming, I’ve got my plane ticket and I’m ready to go. It’s game on. We’re going to be even more on it than we were in North America because we will have had the experience of playing the set, so you guys are really going to get the best of what we have to offer.”

The band are also celebrating that unexpected Grammy award, as Rudess explains.

“To get the Grammy is so meaningful and I feel that it’s a real validation. I honestly didn’t feel that we were going to win because I wondered whether Dream Theater is really a metal group? I mean we have elements of metal but we’re not totally metal. So it was a welcome surprise.”

Dream Theater are appearing at the following dates:
Apr 20: Belfast SSE Arena
Apr 21: Newcastle Utilita Arena
Apr 23: London Wembley Arena

Limited tickets remain for all shows. Support comes from UK prog metallers TesseracT.

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