SYKES/PORTNOY: BLOCKING MY BLUE MURDER BONERZ?

Portnoy (left) with Tom Morello, John goddamn Sykes, That Metal Show host Eddie Trunk, and Doug Pinnick of King’s X

There are days when it seems like ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy is underachieving (cough Adrenaline Mob), but the wider view reveals a hard-working guy who cares greatly about quality music. His mistakes are mistakes (singing on DT records, 12-stepper lyrics, AX7), and his post-DT career so far is basically frantic, low-confidence base-covering, but hey that’s the reality of a messy break-up. You get a little crazy and scared. But with time and patience, Portnoy will land another Images And Words-sized creative success. This is my belief.

So imagine how smugly right I feel about that belief when it was announced Monday that Portnoy is pairing with hungry, mega-talented ace John fucking Sykes (Blue Murder, Whitesnake). Bonerz!

There are a pair of bummerz to this. The first is that Portnoy and Sykes announced this not here on MetalSucks but on VH1’s That Metal Show with my fellow Blue Murder booster Eddie Trunk, who btw has callously ignored my request for help in tracking down the reclusive Jake E. Lee. So my pooper is injured twice over.

Secondly, yeah it’s awesome to have Sykes out of that junky Thin Lizzy cover band and back doing his own jamz (read here), butttt shouldn’t he be reuniting with powerstache Carmine Appice and farty Tony Franklin for a proper Blue Murder tour, album, and party in my crotch? I mean, last season on TMS, Appice told Trunk that he and Sykes were starting to talk about a Blue Murder reunion; now Sykes reports that he and Portnoy would do some Blue Murder material, and they have yet to announce the project’s bassist, so they might even end up drafting Franklin, whom Sykes loves. So if Portnoy is standing between me and Blue Murder, I retract all my positive vibes and vow to destroy him. Srs don’t fuck with me on this, dude.

-ADF