“mikeis a great musician” LaBrie continued. “To put it this way, who knows what the future will bring? Maybe there’ll be a day when I’m like, ‘Holy shit. This track would be perfect to have mike do that.’ Or it could be something coming from him, from his side. So we’ll see. You know what? I’m open. And that’s the thing, we’re in a really good place now. And yes, it should have happened a long time ago. But we humans tend to [let] Our pride overwhelms us.”

In a separate interview earlier this year LaBrie hinted that he’s at a point in his life where negativity isn’t worth carrying around. “The thing is, you get to a point in life where… you can’t get around it [anger]. Don’t carry hate around with you; don’t carry negativity around with you. We’ve carried it around for way too long in my opinion and it served no purpose. It was just for the damn division. It was very divisive and very damaging.”

“Hey, listen, just the other day mike text me and he was like, ‘Hey, James, I just want to congratulate you on the Grammy. You bloody well deserved that – you and the band. Fantastic. Hats off. Bravo, all that stuff. And I write mike back, and I said, ‘Frick, man. mike, that is very admirable of you.’ I said, ‘I think it’s pretty cool that you’re saying those things.’ And he said, ‘Great, man. Love it.’

“Well, it’s great to be back. We talk to each other, we chat and all that stuff. And that’s the kind of world I want to live in, as opposed to negativity [and] hate it…it’s just not worth it.” As for new music, LaBrie‘s long-awaited new solo outing, Nice shade of grey, is available today through Inside Out Music. You can stream the entire album below.