Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to concentrate further on the band that would ultimately become Dream Theater. Though a number of lineup changes followed, the three original members remained together along with James LaBrie and Jordan Rudess until September 8, 2010, when Portnoy left the band. In October 2010, the band held auditions for a drummer to replace Portnoy.

On October 7, 2008, Dream Theater returned to Avatar Studios to begin work on their tenth album, resuming their relationship with Paul Northfield to engineer and mix the record. The album, entitled Black Clouds & Silver Linings, was released on June 23, 2009. In addition to the standard CD, the album was made available on vinyl LP, as well as a 3-disc Special Edition CD that includes the full album, a CD of instrumental mixes of the album and a CD of six cover songs from artists such as Queen and Rainbow. On July 1, 2009, the album debuted at No. 6 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart, with first week sales totalling 40,285, making their highest entry on the chart. The album featured "The Shattered Fortress", the last in Mike Portnoy's series of songs about his 12-step recovery from alcoholism, as well as the song "The Best of Times", described by Portnoy as "a real heavy personal subject about my dad who passed away during the making of the album ... He was battling cancer throughout its making."  The band also embarked on a second Progressive Nation tour, including the tour's first performances in Europe. Opeth, Unexpect and Bigelf supported Dream Theater in Europe, while Zappa Plays Zappa, Pain Of Salvation, and Beardfish were slated to perform on the North American leg. However, Pain of Salvation and Beardfish were unable to tour with Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa because of financial troubles within their respective record labels. The two new bands that filled the vacated slots for the Progressive Nation 2009 tour in North America were Bigelf and Scale the Summit with Bigelf performing on both European and North American legs.  After the Progressive Nation Tour, Dream Theater re-entered the studio to write and record a brand new instrumental track for inclusion on the God of War III soundtrack EP God of War: Blood & Metal. The track, entitled "Raw Dog" (God (of) War reversed), marked the first time that the band has written and recorded an exclusive track for an outside project. "Raw Dog" includes the first ever commercially recorded harpejji track, performed by Jordan Rudess, as well as Dream Theater's final recorded performance with Mike Portnoy on drums. In December 2009, during their Black Clouds & Silver Linings tour whilst visiting Australia, Dream Theater appeared with one support act, Pain of Salvation. In March 2010, they toured South America with Bigelf. Afterwards, during the summer of 2010, Dream Theater supported Iron Maiden on the US and Canadian legs of their summer tour which were the last shows DT played during 2010.

Did anyone say anything about Black Clouds?