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Chicago metal overlords Disturbed turn away from the darkness and
towards the light on Believe. By Sean Plummer
Disturbed’s David Draiman seems, no pun intended,
disturbed. The Chicago metal band’s singer just recently learned
that MTV has rejected the video for ‘Prayer’, the first single
off Believe, their follow-up to 2000’s The Sickness.
Their reasoning?
“They simply said that it is too closely reminiscent
of the events of September 11th.”
Do you agree?
“No, not in the slightest.”
‘Prayer’s lyrics comprise a conversation
between Draiman and God, and were written in the wake of last fall’s
tragedy. The video, whose treatment was written by the singer and is
based on the Book of Job, features the band members — Draiman,
guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist Fuzz —
walking along a city street and emerging unscatched from various potentially
fatal calamities, including collapsing construction sites and car wrecks.
“We all survive,” Draiman notes. “We
all come through the devastation and the destruction. We aren’t
affected by it. We achieve our redemption.” (At the time of writing,
Disturbed has decided not to re-edit the video. Instead it is available
on the Believe CD in its original form. MuchMusic has put it
into light rotation.)
Like everyone, Draiman was affected by September 11th,
2001. “I think that everyone’s perpectives have to change
somewhat,” he says. “I think that it is unfortunate the way
that we reacted to it. I don’t think that the reaction was significant
enough. I think it takes a lot more than just buying a whole bunch of
American flag merchandise to heal wounds like that. I think it takes
a whole lot more than pretending to be patriotic for a month or two
to bring stability and peace to a nation, and I think it takes a whole
lot more than trying to blame this incident as a vengeful act from a
God having a temper tantrum.”
Draiman’s relationship to God and religion is
a conflicted one. Raised in an orthodox Jewish household, the singer’s
faith was sorely tested when we was younger. “It became a little
too severe for my tastes at one point,” he recalls. “My family
had gone through a bit of a tumultuous period, a brief period where
my father was incarcerated for a couple of years and came back from
being institutionalized and was really born again. Things sort of were
directly intensified at that point and it got a little bit too much
for me to swallow.”
Music provided a different kind of salvation when
he was essentially rejected by his family, including his beloved grandfather.
As a result, “something religion never gave me was a safe feeling,”
he says. “I do believe in God and I have my own sort of way of
communicating with God but I don’t necessarily subscribe to all
the standard theological beliefs that are associated with organized
Judaism in relation to God. I just try to develop a path for myself.”
Having built a solid following in Chicago’s southside
clubs, Disturbed signed to legendary music biz player Irving Azoff’s
Giant label and released The Sickness in 2000. Reaction to the
band’s industrially-accented metal was increasingly positive, with
Disturbed being promoted from the second stage to the main stage on
last year’s Ozzfest. Further touring and radio support of the singles
‘Stupify’ and ‘Down With The Sickness’ solidified
their popularity and pushed sales of The Sickness past 2.5 million,
especially in Canada which remains their best-selling territory.
Buoyed by that success but chastened by both the death
of his grandfather and the events of September 11th, Draiman realized
that the next record could not come from the same dark place as their
debut. “I think that another record like The Sickness would
have been inappropriate in today’s times,” Draiman says, “and
it wouldn’t have been straight from our hearts. We need to speak
to what we currently believe in and how we currently are feeling, and
we need to be responsible in terms of being true to our own emotions.”
The result is Believe. Musically, the first
album’s electronic textures have been dropped, although the metal
remains. Draiman has also mostly abandoned the guttural, syncopated
style that defined The Sickness in favour of melody and singing.
Thematically, Draiman is still on “some pretty deep s**t”
but his world view is far less pessimistic. Call it The Wellness.
“The whole record deals with different aspects
of belief: belief in yourself, belief in the future of humankind, belief
in God, belief in the supernatural. It’s all different ranges of
positivity and negativity, good and bad, anger and joy, good and evil.”
Which means that Draiman will still be wrestling with
his demons for the forseeable future. “There’s that duality
that continues to exist. While [performing] is therapeutic and it does
enable you to exorcize demons, it still requires harnessing all those
dark elements of your subconscious that you don’t normally show
people, and continuing to open and close that door, which is kept very
closely guarded and locked when not in use, is taxing.”
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