Reprise RecordsDisturbed's Immortalized, the band's first album in five years, is released today, August 21. On one song from the album, frontman David Draiman demands to know "What are you waiting for?" which is a question that you've probably wanted to ask Draiman for the past Disturbed-less half-decade. So what exactly was Disturbed waiting for?
"What we were waiting for was for the urge and the withdrawal symptoms of not being out there, of not playing live -- which is the greatest addiction in my life experience -- to be undeniable and all consuming," Draiman tells ABC Radio.
The urge reached that point when Draiman, guitarist Dan Donegan and drummer Mike Wengren reunited in January 2014 to write material in the same room together for the first time since 2001. Draiman says that the trio immediately fell into their old writing groove, and that experience of working together again "re-inspired" and "reinvigorated" the band.
"When you get in the room with the people that you're destined to have been put together with and that you are blessed enough to have the chemistry to write the greatest material of your life with, it's an amazing thing," Draiman says. "Every single day that we spent together, good things came from it. There wasn't a single day wasted."
The Immortalized writing process, along with the production of Kevin Churko, who has worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Papa Roach and Five Finger Death Punch, led to what Draiman describes as Disturbed's "most diverse" album.
"It was time to spread our wings a little bit, to progress, change a little bit, evolve," Draiman says. "There's still plenty of the classic Disturbed sound that you would expect on the record but there are definitely a number of fairly hard left turns that exist as well."
While calling your first album back after five years Immortalized may seem a bit bombastic, Draiman explains that the title refers more to the power of music, rather than their own power.
"Music can bring those images and those memories back in a way that's so vivid and so real unlike anything else on the planet, in my opinion, and that is immortality, that immortalizes someone," he says. "So it wasn't necessarily saying, 'Ah! We're back and we're immortalized!" it's encouraging people, and it's encouraging us to continue to strive for that."
Disturbed will be celebrating Immortalized tonight at the House of Blues in Chicago with their first live performance since 2011. The band will embark on a full-length tour in support of the album next spring, but Draiman says tonight's show will be a "nice, long set full of some surprises, a lot of the greats and all the pent-up fury and withdrawal and desire that has been stored up for five years now, or four years I should say since we performed."
"It's gonna be massive," he promises.
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