News

VoicesUK has organised a fanclub meet & greet at the Manchester show in October. Fanclub members are eligible and can sign up (and find more information) on the forum.

Dream Theater meet & greet passes are also on sale for all European dates. More information can be found here.

Rich Wilson explains:

"For the second edition of Lifting Shadows, I've tracked down and interviewed even more people involved in the Dream Theater story. The text has also been thoroughly revised and updated. So there's also a detailed look at the making of the Black Clouds & Silver Linings album, which includes all new interviews with the band. Plus I've also added an appendix which covers the numerous side projects, such as Liquid Tension Experiment, Transatlantic, OSI, G3 and other solo albums, with interviews with the likes of Neal Morse, Jim Matheos, Tony Levin and the DT guys. This is edition is also around 40% longer than the original."

There are two versions of the book on sale:

The Classic Edition of the book is a standard hardback version. If you imagine the "Words" book of the first edition, expanded by 40%, with 8 pages of colour photos.

The second of these is the Limited Edition book, which is bound in real leather. This contains the same text as the Classic Edition and also has 8 pages of colour photos. The print run is limited to 2000 copies and each copy is hand signed by Rich.

Full details of all the ordering process, prices, details of shipping charges, a list of FAQ and other details on the book can be found at www.liftingshadows.com

The latest double issue (11 & 12) is now shipping. We're pretty pleased with this one; it's packed full of content and comes with the Official Fanclub CD '08 and our very own Road To Wembley DVD. Please note that the DVD is in PAL format and will, therefore, play in PAL-compatible players (such as this) and DVD computer software (we would recommend installing VLC Player). We do apologise for this but it was beyond our means to convert the entire production to NTSC format on this occasion.

"It is with the utmost disappointment that I am forced to share the unfortunate news of both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish having to pull out of this summer's Progressive Nation tour…

Their label Inside Out just recently lost the financial funding for the tour as a result of their distributor SPV recently claiming bankruptcy...which effectively meant that both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish lost the tour support that was essential to their ability to come to North America for Progressive Nation.

All parties involved (myself, both bands, Inside Out, etc) are beyond devastated at this turn of events and are truly sorry to all of the fans that were looking forward to this lineup. We tried everything we could do to salvage the situation, but in the end it was not possible…

Well as the album title says, every Black Cloud does indeed have a Silver Lining....so with this unfortunate news, I bring to you the good news of 2 incredible bands that will jumping on board Progressive Nation to join Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa this summer: Bigelf and Scale The Summit.

Los Angeles' Bigelf are my personal favorite new band to come along in many years...their latest CD "Cheat The Gallows" is my favorite album of the year and I already had positioned them onto the European run of Progressive Nation in the Fall… with them now joining us on PN09 in North America as well, it looks like world domination is now not that far out of reach for them! Pretty soon, everyone will hopefully be falling for their retro, psychedelic, progressive, hard rock, doom metal as hard as I have!

Houston instrumental band Scale The Summit are a recent discovery for me and their top notch musicianship will be a perfect fit to this Progressive Nation lineup stylistically falling very nicely between the musicality of Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa. They bring the instrumental elements of prog rock and fusion into today's contemporary hard rock/metal sounds and are one of the most talented group of young musicians I've seen assembled in many years.

Once again, apologies to anybody disappointed in this unexpected and unavoidable lineup change...but the circumstances were beyond our control... In any event, PN09 will carry on and still deliver the most musical bang for its buck this summer throughout North America and we look forward to sharing the evening with you!"

Sincerely,
Your Progressive Rock Ambassador,
Mike Portnoy

Thanks to Steve ('progmetalgod' on the forum) for drawing everybody's attention to the fact that today is the 4th anniversary of Voices UK's Official status! Here are a few words of celebration from some familiar faces…

There is news that you will not want to miss due for release on Friday 12 June. Check this thread. K x

Welcome to what I'd like to call 'version 0.5' of the new site. You'll no doubt notice some major changes and I can promise you that there are plenty more to come. This is more of a test of our new look; we'll be tweaking it and adding lots of new content / features in the coming weeks and months. There are undoubtedly some bugs that you'll come across - just give me a shout if you find one (greg@voicesuk.net or on the forum) and I'll get it ironed out. We of course welcome your feedback and have started a thread on the forum for this purpose. Enjoy!

Hi guys, I'm pleased to announce that Issue 10 of the fanzine in now winging its way across the globe and around the corner to all you Voicees! It features interviews with MP, JR and Charlie Dominici, as well as some fantastic articles we received from you guys. Keep up the good work!

If you do not receive your fanzine, or you have moved house, please notify the Membership team in the first instance. They will need to confirm your address before I can dispatch a replacement. If your membership has expired, the envelope will remind you to renew. Don't forget! :o) K x

Dream Theater's tenth studio album has been revealed. Roadrunner will release the record on June 22nd. In addition to the standard version CD, the album will also be available on vinyl LP, as well as a three-disc Special Edition CD that will include the full album, a CD of instrumental mixes of the album and a CD of six cover songs, the titles of which will be announced weekly in the run up to the release of the album.

You can find all the information regarding the different editions of the album, as well as pre-order info, on the Roadrunner site. The full contents of the Deluxe Collector's Edition Box Set can be found here along with Mike's explanation video here.