PyroMusic.net recently caught up with DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy to discuss the band's new album, Black Clouds And Silver Linings . An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Q: With songs such as 'The Best Of Times' (written about Portnoy's late father) and 'The Shattered Fortress' (the final chapter in the drummer's 12-Step Suite) this record must have been a rather personal experience for you. Was this a therapeutic album for you to write and record?

Mike Portnoy: (Pauses) "Well yeah, I guess it was. I mean, those two songs in particular were definitely heavy for me and very personal for me. I've been writing about my recovery from addiction and alcoholism for the last five albums, because there's been a 12-part series of songs that interconnect and it's taken five albums to complete. So finally completing that process with 'The Shattered Fortress' on this album has definitely been therapeutic, to finally be done with that project, which has been kind of hanging over my head for eight years now. So that's a relief and definitely therapeutic to have written about all 12 steps. And the other song 'The Best Of Times' was a real heavy situation for me be to be going through during the making of this record. Flying back and forth from New York to California all throughout the making of it, visiting my dad who was sick and dying. Writing this song and being able to play it for him before he died was truly one of the most incredible gifts I was ever given. I wanted to write a song that was about our 41 years together and the you know, the good stuff, that's why it's called 'The Best Of Times' even though it's about such a sad, sad subject. But yeah, being able to play that for him at his bedside before he died was unbelievably meaningful and powerful for me and something that I'll never, ever forget."

Q: With regard to the '12-Step Suite', there have been rumours for a few years that once it was finished the band would play the entire thing live. Is that in the works at the moment?

Mike Portnoy: "It's happening, yes. It was always inevitably going to happen; it was always part of my masterplan to write these five songs that would connect and ultimately be played together, that was always the intention. We just haven't started doing it yet, but surely sometime down the road we will."

Go to this location for the complete interview.