DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess has confirmed that the band's next album will arrive in late February 2019. He told Metal Wani in a new interview (hear audio below): "Right now, we're mixing it. It's being mixed as we speak. It sounds awesome. I'm so excited about it. There's a very, very strong energy around the band these days. We all feel very connected and excited about what's coming. We can't wait to unleash the whole thing on everybody. And that's all gonna happen really, really soon as well; it's just right around the corner."

DREAM THEATER's next studio album — its 14th — will be the band's first for Sony Music's progressive imprint InsideOut Music. The group spent the past 25 years recording under various labels in the Warner Music Group system, most recently Roadrunner Records, which released five albums by the band between 2007 and 2016.

Rudess recently told Lotsofmuzik that DREAM THEATER's follow-up to 2016's "The Astonishing", the wildly ambitious double concept LP which has been criticized by some fans for being an overblown, self-indulgent exercise in excess, would see him and his bandmates going "back to the roots, back to the core of the sound — screaming Hammond organ, killing leads, chunky riffs, slamming drums, and everybody will be there moshing! [Laughs]"

Rudess went on to describe the songwriting process for DREAM THEATER's upcoming album as "definitely very collaborative. We basically hid away in a secret location, we found an old barn turned into studio and set aside a couple of months to do everything. We were very constructive, very energized, had a great time together, a lot of laughs. We cooked together, joked around, but in general, we had an uninterrupted musical experience together, which was very productive."

DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci previously hinted that the band's next disc would be musically inspired by the "Images, Words & Beyond" tour, which saw the pioneering group celebrating the 25th anniversary of its milestone RIAA-gold-certified album "Images And Words".