He never came back. Mike Portnoy was the first drummer for Kevin Moore's and Jim Matheos's band "OSI",Mike Portnoy did 2 albums with them but had no interest after that,he said Kevin Moore was very difficult to work with and there was no fun in doing something so restrained.
So when the third record was being worked upon Mike Portnoy refused to work on that.
yup. moore cut and pasted MP's drums for an industrial sort of sound and probably had some specific ideas for the drums, but that's not really what a collab project is about.
i'm not sure where i stand with current DT. DT is my favorite band. i got involved in 2000 - i saw MP's name in all the drum mags i read and was interested in getting into "odd times." so i bought the Once In a Live Time live album (i always judge new bands with live performances) and wow was i blown away! immediately bought everything else i could get and MP's drumming style is a huge part of how i play now.
for me, the later MP albums musically seemed to be very chord-based, rather than riff based. most classic metal songs are based on a riff - master of puppets, battery, walk, metropolis, under a glass moon - maybe even a particular drum groove. then the 1st Mangini album seemed even more chord-based.
but as they aged, it seems like they wanted to be "more melodic" but i feel they instead just got rid of awesome riffs and replaced it with chords, whole notes and the occasional melody accompany (which isn't a riff even though it may be single notes).
of course it's very difficult to have killer riffs for every song you create, and i'm not sure if it's a piano/pad influence on the guitars lately, but just something i've felt.
haven't really heard the latest album much, but i'm working my way through it.
for me as a drummer, i feel like MP wrote drum parts in a creative manner to make the drum part musically and physically interesting. MM's drum parts fit the songs well, but to me, nothing stands out too much. maybe it's just a different goal, but for me Dream Theatre has always been about showcasing their abilities - not for ego sake, but to show that you can break the rules to make something amazing compared to everything else out there.
maybe they feel they are still doing that, and rightly so. but for me it's just different or not what i go to dream theater for.
meh, i could go on for hours.
)Mind you, that was before the days of hyper-compression and loudness wars... Iron Maiden could do with an outside producer rather than 'arry's mate Kevin Shirley, they sound terrible on record these days imo)
