Dream Theater ready to wake up Alliant Energy PowerHouse in Cedar Rapids

This summer, Dream Theater launches Dreamsonic, the first of what the band hopes will be a recurring traveling festival showcasing prog-metal, the hybrid style that blends the power and crunch of heavy metal with the intricate musicality and the epic, multifaceted compositional nature of classic progressive rock.

It’s a sound Dream Theater helped pioneer beginning in the late 1980s.

The tour will be a chance to see Dream Theater in action, with a stop at the Alliant Energy PowerHouse in Cedar Rapids on July 13, 2023. Also in the lineup are two openers making waves in the prog-metal world — Animals As Leaders and Devin Townsend — and it could have other impacts.

For one thing, Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci hopes Dreamsonic raises the profile of the prog-metal genre itself.

“Anything to boost the community and make more and more people aware of it (is good),” he said in an early June phone interview. “I always say when we first started and we were developing our sound, there really wasn’t prog-metal. There really wasn’t a thing, right?

“Now it’s kind of part of the big family tree and there are so many offshoots and bands doing this type of thing. So yeah, I think we’re probably more powerful together as we join forces, and events like this, they bring more attention to it.”

The Dreamsonic tour could also have an impact on Dream Theater’s music itself. Petrucci said he and his bandmates — singer James LaBrie, bassist John Myung, keyboardist Jordan Rudess and drummer Mike Mangini — expect to begin work on a new studio album toward the end of this year. And tours often put the band on the path to its next musical statement.

“We haven’t started anything as far as the music is concerned. But we have had discussions on a direction,” Petrucci said of the next album. “Sometimes it takes perspective to think about the next record, and the perspective comes from what kind of record did we just make and what happened on the tour.

“Sometimes a tour can be very influential. I remember before we wrote (2003’s) ‘Train of Thought,’ for example, which is a very heavy record, I remember touring and we had these discussions like, ‘Man, there are certain songs that are really heavy and just get the crowd going. Every song is just undeniable. What if we wrote a whole album like that?’ And that was ‘Train of Thought.’ ”

The most recent Dream Theater album, “A View From the Top of the World,” was a rather unique album for the long-running band. It was a rare time the band members began a project with no plan for the music they would make. When they were shut out from touring by the pandemic, they decided to set up shop in their recently completed studio and simply see what would happen.

“Normally we do go in, and it’s important to have a plan and a direction and get everybody on the same page,” Petrucci said. “In this instance, this example, that was not the case. It was us just kind of like, ‘Hey guys, it’s better to get together and play music and hang out with each other than to sit around at home doing nothing. This is what we do. Let’s just make music.’ ”

This more spontaneous approach worked out well, in Petrucci’s view. And “A View From the Top of the World” was well received by fans and critics. What’s more, the album’s lead track, “The Alien,” won Dream Theater the band’s first Grammy, for Best Metal Performance.

Petrucci feels “A View From the Top of the World” makes for a strong addition to Dream Theater’s overall body of work.

“There were some cool moments on that record. First of all, it’s definitely one of the more technical and heavy records we’ve done,” he said. “I feel like the title track, ‘A View From the Top of the World,’ is really one of my favorite moments, and one of our best compositions, as far as like an epic track. I love what we did with that song. I love the middle breakdown of that song and all of the different elements it has.

“And then the other thing is as a guitar player, I was able to use an eight-string guitar for the first time. ... ‘Awaken the Master’ was the first song I wrote on an eight-string, so we touched on that, as well.”

Because the Dreamsonic tour includes two opening acts, Dream Theater won’t do the type of three-hour show the band has played on recent headlining tours. But Petrucci said the band will still cover considerable musical ground — no small undertaking for a band with 15 full-length studio albums.

“We’re trying to make a mix of the things we’re known for,” Petrucci said. “There are lots of different sides of Dream Theater. There’s the prog side, the metal side, the epic side, and we’re trying to represent as much of what we’re all about in that hour and a half we have on stage.”

Petrucci expects to have collaboration in some form between Dream Theater, Animals As Leaders and Townsend during the evening.

“It’s an opportunity that it would be a shame to miss,” he said.