| A Dramatic Turn of Events | ||||
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 Cover art by Hugh Syme | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | September 12, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | January–May 2011 | |||
| Studio | Cove City Sound Studios, Long Island Mixland Studio, Midhurst, Canada | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 77:01 | |||
| Label | Roadrunner | |||
| Producer | John Petrucci | |||
| Dream Theater chronology | ||||
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| Singles from A Dramatic Turn of Events | ||||
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A Dramatic Turn of Events is the eleventh studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, released worldwide in September 2011 through Roadrunner Records. It is the band's first recording to feature drummer Mike Mangini, following the departure of founding member Mike Portnoy in September 2010. The album was written, recorded, mixed, and mastered between January and June 2011 at Cove City Sound Studios in Long Island, New York. It was produced by guitarist John Petrucci and mixed by Andy Wallace. Two singles, "On the Backs of Angels" and "Build Me Up, Break Me Down", were released in promotion of the album.
For A Dramatic Turn of Events, Dream Theater underwent a self-proclaimed musical change, reevaluating and restructuring themselves. The album has drawn stylistic comparisons to two of the band's past albums, Images and Words (1992) and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999). Many songs on the album were written with a specific purpose in mind as Petrucci, one of the album's primary composers, felt a sense of responsibility to fans following Portnoy's departure. The album's title was derived from its recurring lyrical themes of dramatic changes in history that have affected people's lives, including contemporary uprisings such as the Libyan Civil War.
A commercial success, A Dramatic Turn of Events moved 36,000 units in the United States during its debut week, charting at number eight on the US Billboard 200. The album received mixed reviews from critics, but nonetheless earned Dream Theater their first-ever Grammy nomination, for "On the Backs of Angels". Between July 2011 and September 2012, the band supported the album on the A Dramatic Turn of Events Tour.