Five years ago, the guys in Disturbed were set to take their fans on a time trip back to the beginnings of the band. A deluxe version of the group’s debut album, The Sickness was finished and dates were booked for an extensive tour on which Disturbed would make the songs from The Sickness the centerpiece of the show.
So it was a big disappointment when Covid came along, scuttling the tour and cutting short the celebration for The Sickness.
“We were cheated out on the 20th anniversary by Covid,” guitarist Dan Donegan said, succinctly summing up the situation in a late-January phone interview.
The shutdown came at an inopportune time for Disturbed in another way as well. In 2015, the band’s career had taken a decidedly unexpected—and positive—turn with the release of what seemed like a most unexpected left-field cover: a slow-paced, darkly-hued rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel song, “The Sound of Silence.” The song caught fire, going No. 1 on the Billboard magazine Hard Rock and Mainstream Rock singles charts, and became the band’s highest charting song on Billboard’s all-genre Top 100 singles chart. In all, it racked up more than 1.5 million digital downloads, was streamed more than 50 million times and was used in the soundtrack for The Blacklist and the video game, Rock Band 4.
That song set the stage for Donegan and his bandmates (singer David Draiman, bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren) to delve further into a more textured side of their music on the 2018 album, Evolution. It was split between songs that fit the kind of edgy and aggressive songs that had made Disturbed one of the most popular heavy metal/hard rock bands of the new millennium, and other songs that built on the acoustic-centric approach of “The Sound Of Silence.”
Then Covid happened and Disturbed saw The Sickness tour canceled and the band’s momentum interrupted for two years.
When the shutdown ended and concert venues started to reopen, Donegan and his bandmates had moved on and made a new studio album, Divisive. Released in fall 2022, it marked a stylistic 180 for the band, with a return to the band’s familiar aggressive full-on electric sound.
In fact, many felt the album recalled the sound Disturbed crafted on The Sickness. Whether intentional or not, Divisive provided a good segue for Disturbed to revisit The Sickness—and turn what is now the 25th anniversary of the debut album into an even bigger celebration.
On March 7, the band released a three-CD deluxe edition of The Sickness. It includes the two studio outtakes that were included on the 20th anniversary reissue, plus a 16-song 2001 concert and additional demos. Now Disturbed has started the tour that was originally planned for the 20th anniversary. In addition to playing The Sickness, the band will do a second set of hit songs. The 25th anniversary tour will also feature new visual production.
“Without giving up too much, we’ve been working with the new set design team, somebody that we’ve known for many years in the industry,” said Donegan. “We’ve kind of had the opportunity to circle back and work with this team of people to help visualize something different and thinking outside the box.
“It’s always fun when we can include pyro or anything, any cool looks and new ways of using things,” he added. “It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be big. It’s going to be a pretty cool-looking set.”
Donegan is relishing this time trip back to the early years of Disturbed, recalling plenty of memories from the early days of the band, the making of The Sickness and touring as the album became a major hit that sold some five million copies. The guitarist, who is the band’s main music writer (Draiman writes most of the lyrics), was the key figure in getting Disturbed off the ground.
“We were all playing in different local bands around the Chicagoland area, mostly in the south suburbs, probably like 45 minutes south of Chicago,” Donegan said. “I was kind of a local staple in the music scene. I played with a few different local bands just trying to find the right pieces to the puzzle. So I started recruiting the guys that stood out to me the most, who shared that same work ethic and that same hunger that I had and basically started stealing them away from their other bands.”
Wengren came aboard first and Steve “Fuzz” Kmak joined on bass (Moyer replaced Kmak in 2003). Multiple singers were auditioned before one day in 1996 Draiman answered an ad Donegan had placed in Illinois Entertainer magazine seeking singers to audition.
The many hopefuls who had auditioned over previous years would generally sing a cover song the band knew. Draiman had another idea for his audition. He asked the band to play an original song and he would invent some lyrics on the spot. By the end of the session, that exercise had produced an early version of “Want,” a song that made it onto The Sickness. What’s more, Donegan knew he’d found the singer with the unique vocal qualities, dedication and ambition that he’d been seeking.
Over the next couple of years, the band continued writing songs and eventually scraped together enough money to record demos of six original songs and a cover of the Tears For Fears hit “Shout” that were strong enough to draw crowds to Disturbed’s club shows around Chicago.
“So we had these seven songs demoed and this was what we started shopping around and showing to the labels and selling to our fans at shows. With most bar bands, especially around here, the club owners, the bar owners, want cover bands because they assume that’s what’s going to draw the crowd,” Donegan said. “But our original music was getting attention and people were learning the songs right away and the owners started saying hey, as long as people are filling up the room—they didn’t care at that point. And they realized people were showing up for our original music, so we did less and less covers and then started doing more and more of our own material.”
By 1999, Disturbed had a major label deal with Giant Records. The Sickness was released the next year. Then came touring—22 months of it before all was said and done. The band would go on to release four more hit albums that each topped Billboard’s album chart before taking a hiatus that spanned 2011 to 2015. Then came the album Immortalized, followed by “The Sound of Silence” single.
When he looks back, Donegan feels good about Disturbed’s efforts during touring to promote The Sickness.
“There are so many great memories and some of my favorite times… from when we’re driving ourselves around in an RV, just slumming it and surviving,” he said. “Sometimes we wouldn’t have hotel rooms. We wouldn’t even shower for days or we were eating on a low budget. I think our first tour, our buyout, each guy got like $5 a day. That was our dinner on the first tour that we did. It was like ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches or something. It was great, though, because we look back and we see that journey and all the hard work that we put into it.”
Disturbed: The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour, Sat, May 10, 6:30pm at Chase Center, San Francisco. More info and tickets: livenation.com.
