From Facebook:
I BEG of the fans to please NOT hold A7X responsible for MY decision...they are just as shocked as you guys..I had been contemplating this and desiring a "break" (not split) as long ago as last year...everything else is fully explained in the press release...thank you all for your support and understanding...this is the hardest thing I've ever done... : (
I'd have thought this was pretty obvious. Anyone blaming A7X is quite frankly being irrational.
I don't blame Avenged Sevenfold. But I will say this much: at the end of the Black Clouds tour it seemed pretty obvious that Portnoy was getting tired. Initially, when it was announced that there'd be no more DT shows for the year after only one headlining tour, many people speculated that it was the entire band getting tired, not just Mike. Now, it turns out that it really was just Mike who needed to slow-down.
Or so it would seem.
Yes, "or so it would seem" because then DT announced the Maiden tour. And then Mike went off to play with A7X. Consciously or not, Mike must have known that he needed to start "testing the waters," that maybe simply touring wasn't getting to him as much as he realized
his involvement in the band itself was. Getting tired with Dream Theater, Mike must have joined up with A7X temporarily, with the conscious or, at least, semi-conscious frame of mind that maybe it was time to start taking all of his eggs out of the same basket.
Mike's a pro and, well, people with careers all do stuff like this at one point or another. We fill out resumes without letting our employers and coworkers know we plan on leaving. Or, on a more personal level, we realize we aren't with the person we
thought we loved-- regardless of how much we may have loved them in the past. That's just the way life is. People change/grow/move-on. It's sad when it happens, of course, but fortunately that changes too.
And so I don't blame A7X, just like I don't blame myself for making some of the hard decisions I've had to make lately. Just like I tried really hard not to blame a good friend of mine for breaking up with my another good friend of mine, who's really like a sister to me, recently.
The fact is Mike was going. He wasn't happy. If gigging with A7X didn't work out, he would have just gone somewhere else. It may not have happened now, but it would have happened eventually. And if it didn't happen, Mike's boredom would have shown through on DT's music.
Thankfully, Mike found a good fit for himself, or at least I hope so.