In a new interview with Chile’s Futuro, DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy was asked for his opinion on last year’s announcement that RUSH‘s surviving members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson had recruited award-winning fusion drummer Anika Nilles to fill in for the late Neil Peart this year as the Canadian rock legends embark on their surprise “Fifty Something” reunion tour. He said: “It’s extremely exciting. I, as a fan, can’t wait to see how they do this and what it’s gonna be like. Neil Peart was not only one of my biggest drum heroes, but he was somebody that I was honored to become friends with in the last decade or so of his life. So, yeah, as a fan of the band and as a friend of Neil‘s, I’m very happy to see them doing this, and I can’t wait to hear what they do.”

Portnoy went on to say that he has “never seen” Anika play in person, “but like everybody else in the world, as soon as the announcement was made, I started pulling up videos on YouTube and saw her playing with Jeff Beck and doing the jazz fusion kind of stuff she does,” he said. “She’s obviously a tremendous drummer, so I’m really curious to see how it sounds.”

Regarding how many times he had gotten asked about his own hypothetical involvement with RUSH prior to last year’s announcement, Portnoy said: “Before (Lee and Lifeson) announced their return, it’s a question that I would get asked in almost every single interview for the last decade: ‘Would you ever play with Geddy and Alex? Would you ever?’ Of course. Those guys are my heroes. But in all honesty, I’m kind of glad that they didn’t even ask me, because that would be way too much pressure, way too much pressure. So, it’s much better this way. I get to enjoy it like a fan.”

DREAM THEATER‘s sixteenth studio album, “Parasomnia”, came out on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks DREAM THEATER‘s first release with Portnoy since 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”.

“Parasomnia” was produced by Petrucci, engineered by James “Jimmy T” Meslin, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme returns once again to lend his creative vision to the cover art.

Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with Petrucci and Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989’s “When Dream And Day Unite” through 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”, before exiting the group in 2010.

Mike Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy. Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.