Drum legend Mike Portnoy (Sons Of Apollo, The Winery Dogs, ex-Dream Theater) posted a photo of himself and former Dream Theater bandmate John Petrucci on New Year's Eve, leading to rumours and speculation amongst the fans. During a recent interview on The Metal Podcast, Portnoy clarified the meaning behind the shot.

Portnoy: "John and I have actually reconnected over the last year or two and actually gotten together many times and had dinner together with our families. The reality is he and I have been friends since the first week in college back in September of 1985, so it's a relationship that goes back 33 years. And our families are all friends, our wives and our kids are all friends, we all grew up together, and that's never gonna go away.

After I left Dream Theater, there were some years worth of drama and bullshit, but the reality is you put all that aside and friends are friends and family is family, and John and I will always be friends and family. Like I said, we've hung out a lot in the last year or so, but we never kind of went public with it, we never posted any pictures of it, we never really talked about it - we didn't wanna stir anything up - but we were together New Year's Eve and his family was here at my house and we were just feeling the love. And it was, like, 'You know what? What a great message to start off the year. Can't we all get along? Give peace a chance.' And we decided to post that picture just to put some smiles on people's faces."

Check out the interview below.