A Place For Sharing, Is Here

The year of 2003 saw a reunion between Kevin Moore and Mike Portnoy, nine years after Moore left Dream Theater. Jim Matheos, guitarist and songwriter for Fates Warning, recruited the pair, along with Sean Malone, to perform in his OSI project. Their debut album, Office of Strategic Influence, can be described as a heavier version of Moore's Chroma Key work, and it was very well received by most of the prog world including Dream Theater fans. It was quite a departure for Portnoy to take drumming direction from Moore and Matheos, since he was essentially playing the role of band member, rather than the band leader role he was accustomed to in Dream Theater, but many critics have applauded his drumming with OSI.

Also during 2003, Dream Theater entered the studio to write and record another album. Since Scenes From A Memory was written and recorded simultaneously in the studio, in the spirit of change, the band took a different approach by setting aside three weeks for writing prior to recording. In the middle of the recording sessions for the album, a special tour with two other progressive metal bands, Queensrÿche and Fates Warning, was undertaken in North America. The "Escape From The Studio American tour", as it was referred to in Dream Theater's promotional material, featured Queensrÿche and Dream Theater as co-headlining acts with Fates Warning performing supporting act duties. As a finale for each concert there was an extended encore in which both Dream Theater and Queensrÿche performed together on stage simultaneously, often playing cover songs.

At the completion the tour, Dream Theater returned to the studio to finish the recording of their seventh album, Train of Thought. They concentrated more on writing a great song-oriented album, a mindset inspired by covering Master of Puppets and Number of the Beast on a previous concert tour. As a result, the heavy metal sound of those two albums seemed to creep into Train of Thought. The album was a critical success, but it alienated a fair proportion of Dream Theater's fans that enjoy traditional progressive rock such as Yes or King Crimson more than modern heavy metal like Tool. Regardless, it seemed to expand Dream Theater's fan base into new territory, that of mainstream heavy metal^.

Another world tour followed, during which Dream Theater performed support act duties for one of their major influences, Yes. A modest North American tour was completed by the two bands, after which Dream Theater continued to tour the world with their so-called "An Evening With Dream Theater" shows.

Their next move was to release another live CD/DVD combination, this time recorded at the famous Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan on their Train of Thought world tour. Live at Budokan was released on October 5, 2004, and further propelled Dream Theater's reputation as one of the premier live acts in progressive metal.