Disturbed May Split ‘Meat + Potatoes’ New Album Into Separate Releases
At long last, Disturbed are set to record a follow-up to 2018's Evolution once the calendar rolls over to 2022.
But the upcoming effort — its material recently described as "meat and potatoes" by Disturbed singer David Draiman — might not emerge as a "traditional full-length" album, he added.
Draiman's remarks come days after the musician spoke to Loudwire Nights about Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds' recent slight against Disturbed. (Hinds used a homophobic slur to depict touring with Draiman's band.) But the Disturbed singer is clearly staying focused on the work instead of dwelling on the chatter.
That's how it seemed in his interview this week with HardDrive Radio. Host Lou Brutus talked to Korn's Jonathan Davis in the same show. Watch the video down toward the bottom of this post.
Draiman said Disturbed are "probably not gonna put out something in the traditional full-length. We're probably gonna be doing two separate releases. So we'll probably have one geared for release, if everything works as planned, by the fall. And then maybe something the following year as well." [via Blabbermouth]
Pressed for details on what sounds like dual EPs, the singer replied, "Define it [how] you want, but it would like five or six songs at a pop, something like that."
Explaining further, he continued, "We live in an environment right now and in an age where people's consumption of music has been very soundbite-ish and very track-driven and very single-driven. And there's definitely some beauty towards continuing to try and [make] things like concept records and telling a long story over the duration of a series of songs. There's huge merit to that."
"But I think that when you write 10 songs and three of them actually get worked at radio and, maybe if you're lucky, the fans are really familiar with half the record and the rest ends up sitting on a shelf, and if you do end up pulling it out one day, it's like an obscure, weird moment during the set, it's almost like gratuitous for yourself," Draiman said. "I don't wanna do that anymore. I wanna make everything count. I wanna make sure that we get the biggest bang for everything we're putting out there."
The approach has Disturbed going back to basics. The musician stressed the use of the band's fundamental ingredients and referenced two of their early albums when talking new material.
"They asked me going in, 'Where do you wanna go with this?'" Draiman said. "And I'm like, 'I wanna go back — I wanna go back to our meat and potatoes, I wanna go back to where we came from.'"
He described the new Disturbed songs as "rhythmic, they are anthemic, they are poly-syncopated, they are meat-and-potatoes Disturbed. It's somewhere between The Sickness and Ten Thousand Fists as far as vibe. And it's can't-stop-but-bob-your-head kind of thing. I couldn't be more happy. And we're so genuinely excited that we don't wanna wait. We're gonna track it after the new year. We're guns blazing right now."
If you're ready to get down with some new sickness, it looks like 2022 (and possibly 2023) may be your year.