This is the problem with Mike right now. He's a gun for hire instead of finding a new home. He's a fill in and has rotating projects all the time. I think it was the main reason he was burned out from DT, too many damn projects. Mike is a guy that doesn't want down time in his life at all. Sometimes you need to pull back a little but he pulled back from the one thing that should have mattered the most instead of all the other things in his life.
I just got LTE. Never had an interest in it, really, but took a chance and ended up liking it.
In the liner notes, MP talks about finishing a ton of DT touring and looking forward to several months off and not wanting to do a side project at first.
What happened to that? Occasionally I'll check out his twitter and he says things like, "My first full week off at home since...." and I'm thinking, shit, I go on vacation for two or three weeks and all I can think of is how great it will be stay home and not worry about anything except getting groceries and watering the garden.
Maybe he needs to take more time off. Then again, what do I know? Obviously there is an audience for his side projects. I just can't get into any of them.
Also, he is always asked about doing a side project with Mikael Åkerfeldt and always seems to publicly pressure him to do something. I'm getting the notion that Mikael doesn't really want to.