Dream Theater, comprised of James LaBrie, John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, John Myung, and Mike Mangini, were in the middle of a sold-out world tour in support of their last release, Distance Over Time, and the 20th anniversary of Scenes From A Memory when a global pandemic brought the world to a stop. The musicians found themselves at home with LaBrie in Canada and the rest of the group in the States. As fate would have it, they’d just finished construction on DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters), a combination live recording studio, rehearsal space, control room, equipment storage facility, and creative hive. With LaBrie in Canada, he initially wrote with the band via Zoom on a monitor in DTHQ. In March 2021, he flew down to New York, quarantined himself, and recorded his vocals face-to-face with Petrucci. The album, A View From The Top Of The World, ultimately threaded together lean and uncompromising hooks with tried-and-true technical proficiency.
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