Credit: Travis ShinnDisturbed's new album Immortalized features a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." So how did David Draiman, the frontman in a hard rock band, get into the mood to sing the folk classic? Marijuana, of course.
"When I cut the vocal [on 'The Sound of Silence], I had just finished tracking another song, and it was the end of my work day," the Disturbed singer tells Revolver. "I was exhausted, and I wasn't expecting to have to sing anymore...so I took a nice hit off a big fat bowl."
"Then [producer] Kevin [Churko] played me the arrangement and he said, ‘You wanna try singing to it?’ And I was like, 'I just got high! I'm stoned off my a**!" continues Draiman. "But I wound up getting back in the vocal booth for two hours, maybe more. Just vibing and going on feel."
Draiman doesn't use marijuana just to sing other people's songs. In fact, he says that "95 per cent of the songs I've written in my life, I've written them while high."
"I'll have a very skeletal musical idea in my head, and then I'll light one up, go in the shower and let the steam kind of build up," Draiman says. "It helps me relax, and I can see the gaps. I can see the holes in the rhythm and the melody and I’ll know where I can go, and what the possibilities are. It helps me be able to perceive everything a little bit more clearly."
Immortalized will be released on August 21.
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