Mangini released his debut solo album, “Invisible Signs”, in November 2023. Accompanying Mangini on the LP were Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.

Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Mike Portnoy, who co-founded DREAM THEATER 40 years ago. 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”.

Mangini made his name in the hard rock world in the mid-1990s when he played with EXTREME, before landing the gig with guitar legend Steve Vai in 1996. Nearly a decade later, Mangini took up a full-time teaching position at the world-renowned Berklee College Of Music.

In a recent interview with Loaded Radio, DREAM THEATER singer James LaBrie was asked how Mangini took the news in October 2023 when LaBrie and the rest of DREAM THEATER broke it to the drummer that Portnoy was coming back. James said: “Well, he was very professional about it. It was very admirable of him to have been… He took it in style and class. I mean, obviously, I think it would have been upsetting — it must have been upsetting — but he took it for what it’s worth and even saying things like, ‘It kind of makes sense, guys. I see why this should be happening and why this would maybe inevitably be happening. It just makes sense for the band and the amount of history that you all have together. It seems natural.’ So, yeah, no, he was a class guy. Classy. Yeah.”

In a January 2024 interview with Chris Akin Presents…, Mangini was asked if he had any “advance notice” that Portnoy would return to DREAM THEATER in the fall of 2023 or if it was “really immediate”. He responded: “Immediate. But it’s like… So the fish comes up out of the water, it’s immediate, but the fish was swimming for a while. Where was the fish? Whatever.”

He continued: “The reason it was easy for me to deal with — very easy, actually — I was, like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Original guy back in band.’ I got I got it. And I didn’t have to go do through a drop-down menu; I didn’t have to do it. It was just I looked at it and went, ‘Okay.’ And plus I don’t know whether it was intuitive, instinctual or intellectual… but I have left so many things on the table for so many years — the publishing of more books, the classes that I wanna teach, the interaction that my own self-development comes largely from me having to teach and talk about it to people. At some point, I mean, I see the whole picture, the grid, and I know what I can’t do, and that inspires me.

“But anyway, the answer to your question is, I got a call and understood the call, and said, ‘Okay, let’s do a joint statement,'” he explained. “And then the next day, I’m, like, ‘Okay.’ I’m having coffee and quite literally, at my think tank, looking at my list and going, ‘How am I gonna complete this job now? I’ve gotta fix this or do that. I’ve got a lot to do.’ My studio facility had construction, there was stuff that had to be fixed. I was, like, ‘Let me just let all of this stuff happen and breathe and just finish these things.’ So that’s what my mindset was. I can’t tell you anything different because that’s what it was.”

Asked how he managed to avoid being angry over the fact that he was being pushed out of DREAM THEATER when Portnoy wanted to come back, even though Mangini was the drummer that helped the band win its first Grammy Award, Mangini said: “Well, a) because I don’t know that that’s what is the full picture. I don’t know that that is what happened indeed. And I don’t let myself even think about it. People decide things and I respect that. It’s just it is what it is.”

In early November 2023, Mangini told SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about his exit from DREAM THEATER and the return of Portnoy: “All I know is the decision was made and when I heard it, all I pictured was, ‘Oh, this is an original guy going back to his band. Uh, okay. All right. Let’s go to the next thing.’ It was nothing more. I was told. It was just nothing more than — it seemed so simple to me. And maybe intuitively it’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ And that was that. That’s really it… So that’s really the crux of it all is it was an easy thing for me to understand. And then once the news hit and it became real, which is when it set in, because once I knew about it, I just got busy. I was, like, ‘Okay, I’ve got all these videos to finish.'”

The 61-year-old Mangini, who joined DREAM THEATER in 2010, continued: “I’m actually doing like a lot of stuff for my recently released solo album. I’ll do some drum playthroughs. Not to yap and yap and yap about it, but I have a lot on my cork board and my lists and things to do and things to accomplish and things to complete. There’s so much there I haven’t been able to do. But once it hit and it became real, it was real quick for me. I’m, like, ‘Okay, I get it.'”

When host Eddie Trunk noted that everything about his exit from DREAM THEATER, from the way it was handled to the fans’ response to Mike‘s attitude about it, was “about as good as it could be,” Mangini concurred. “It is as good as it could be,” Mike said. “I think people are where they need to be. It’s, like, there’s stuff to do, there’s places to be, there’s people to see, there are things to accomplish and roles to fulfill and tasks to do. And that’s what it is. That’s really what it is.

“How lucky am I, how fortunate am I to be just a part of that history, to have all this amazing stuff happen?” he continued. “It’s positive, positive, positive.

“I know I’ve accomplished some things with my career, and I’ve had a lot of struggles and a lot of things that didn’t work or whatever, but for my parents to be in their 90s, to see this happen, and I’m not talking about career stuff; I’m talking about how I’ve treated people and how they treat me. I mean, I think that’s what I want for my kids — I wanna feel well about how they are with people and how people treat them at the end of the day. I think that’s just awesome.”