Sons Of Apollo have been a supergroup in waiting for a long time. Five years, to be precise, ever since former Dream Theater members Derek Sherinian and Mike Portnoy teamed up with bassist Billy Sheehan and guitarist Tony MacAlpine to form the short-lived instrumental live project PSMS. The musical understanding and chemistry between band members was palpable, and over the intervening years, Sherinian has been frequently hounding Portnoy to try to persuade him to convert the band into a fully fledged studio unit.
“PSMS was nothing more than a fun live thing and we didn’t have any expectations beyond that,” says Portnoy. “It was something for me and Derek to be playing together again and have some fun. We did a European tour and an Asian tour. The musical chemistry in that band was so strong and each individual musician was so strong that after that tour, Derek was egging me on to do something more full-time with it, but the timing was just not very good. It was also intentional for me to kind of avoid the progressive metal genre to do different things. Finally, earlier this year, after years of nudging me on, we finally got to a point where the time seemed right to pick up where we had left off and turn it into a full-time, vocal band.”
