Drummer Mike Portnoy (ADRENALINE MOB, FLYING COLORS, ex-DREAM THEATER) is featured in a new interview with Metal Insider. An excerpt is available below:

Q: What are your thoughts on having both the Adrenaline Mob and Flying Colors records out now? Did you know they would both hit at the same time?

Portnoy: "No, it really wasn’t by design or part of any master plan. They were recorded many months apart last year. The Flying Colors album was started around January and the Adrenaline Mob album was started around April. So they were scattered in terms of recording, so I assumed they would come out that way. But it just turned out, with two different record companies, they both scheduled it for March releases. So at first I thought it was a crazy move, but the more I thought about it and the more I’ve sort of seen this evolve, I think it’s actually been a good thing. I think there was a lot of speculation or anticipation as to what I would be coming out with after Dream Theater. I think if only one of these albums came out it wouldn’t paint the full picture.

Flying Colors is more of a pop, alternative, prog kind of thing and Adrenaline Mob is more of a hard rock metal thing. So I’m glad people are actually going to get to hear both of these albums at the same time so you can kind of hear the balance of what I’m doing. It’s not just one or the other. It’s about both of them, and it’s about both of those styles. That’s what I’m about. I love so many different kinds of music and that’s what I want to do with my career post Dream Theater, I want do lots of different things. So it’s kind of cool people are getting to hear the yin and the yang at the same time."

Q: If you had been asked to join a super proggy metally, kind of Dream Theater-esque band, would you have purposefully not done it? Did you want to explore?

Portnoy: "Yeah, honestly I was interested in exploring different things that don’t sound like Dream Theater. I did Dream Theater for twenty five years and all of the projects I did while in Dream Theater, whether they were LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT or TRANSATLANTIC, they were always rooted in prog. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously I love it, it’s a huge part of what I do. But one of the things I really wanted to do now is explore other things with other types of players. And to be honest, everything that I’m currently doing kind of fell into my lap. I didn’t really initiate any of these things. I didn’t initiate Flying Colors, I didn’t initiate Adrenaline Mob, I didn’t initiate the John Sykes thing when I was working with him. These were all things that came my way.

But to get back on track to what I was going to say, when Russell Allen approached me to check out what he was working on and if I would be interested in it, to be honest, I was kind of fearing that it would sound like SYMPHONY X meets Dream Theater, which is just not what I wanted to do. So I was pleasantly surprised when I hit play and heard the demo of 'Undaunted', and suddenly it was just these big riffs and Russ’ big vocals. I think the fact that it didn’t sound like Dream Theater or Symphony X is what drew me to it and really appealed to me."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Adrenaline Mob's new album, Omertá, was produced by the band and mixed by Jay Ruston (ANTHRAX, STEEL PANTHER). It features the following 11 songs:

'Undaunted'

'Psychosane'

'Indifferent'

'All On The Line'

'Hit The Wall'

'Feelin' Me'

'Come Undone' (DURAN DURAN cover ft. Lzzy Hale of HALESTORM)

'Believe Me'

'Down To The Floor'

'Angel Sky'

'Freight Train'

Adrenaline Mob have again updated their live schedule for the summer. It is now as follows:

June

16 - Szene - Vienna, Austria
17 - Conrad SOHM - Dornbirn, Austria
18 - Z7 - Pratteln, Switzerland
20 - Orion - Rome, Italy
21 - Gods Of Metal - Milan, Italy
23 - Graspop Metal Meeting - Dessel, Belgium

July

8 - Bospop Festival - Weert, Netherlands

Go to this location for ticket information and updates.