Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke recently sat down with legendary drummer Mike Portnoy ahead of his show with Sons of Apollo at Dublin’ Ireland’s Tivoli Theater. Among some of the topics Mike spoke about were Sons of Apollo, a follow up album to ‘Psychotic Symphony’ and reflecting on his friend Vinnie Paul who recently passed away.
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On how Mike views Sons of Apollo against his other many projects, Mike said:
“We have full intentions of being as full time as we can be with something like this. We all obviously still have other things, Billy is still in Mr. Big, Derek is still in Black Country Communion, Jeff still does T.S.O, and I still have Neil Morris, Flying Colors, Trans Atlantic, Metal Allegiance and The Winery Dogs, so we all have other things. But, our intention is to be as full time as we can. We’re all focused on it this year and have carved out the majority of 2018 just focusing on this. Then once we get through this tour we have full intentions to reconvene and start a second album and do it all over. So that’s what we’re all hoping for.” Mike concluded saying “As long as people still support this then we’ll keep doing it.”
When asked to speculate as tho what other musical dimensions the band might explore for their follow up album, Mike offered some insight as to what that might sound like.
“I would anticipate that it’s going to continue in the same direction as the first album, because I mean that’s what came out. That’s what happens when you put the five of us together, what came out was Psychotic Symphony. So I would assume with the second record the general style will be the same, but I think it will be even better because now we have this chemistry. We’ve been touring all year long together.” “Any time you do a first album it’s kind of an experiment and you’re just getting to know each other, but then you put out the first album, you go on tour, you get to know each other and then the second album is when you’re even more of a cohesive band because you’ve spent all that time together.”
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Reflecting on his friend Vinnie Paul who recently passed away, Mike recalled;
“Vinnie was a friend of mine for a long time. We became friend right around the timer they [Pantera] put out Cowboys From Hell and we put out Images and Words. “I became good friends with not only Vinnie, but all four of the guys in the band and to this day remain good friends with all of them.” “Getting back to Vinnie specifically, when I heard Cowboys From hell and Vulgar Display it was like okay, this is fuckin’ great Metal drumming. i was already listening to Charlie Benante [Anthrax], Dave Lombardo [Slayer], Lars Ulrich [Metallica] but by the early 90’s Vinnie was kind of the next guy in line to carry the torch for the Thrash or Groove Metal movement.”