In a new interview with Nic and Big J of the Boise, Idaho radio station 100.3 The X Rocks, DISTURBED frontman David Draiman was asked about the “throwback” vibe of the band’s new single, “I Will Not Break”, which was released earlier this month. David said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It wasn’t intentional, that much I’ll tell you. It came at the end of our recording session. It’s one of the last songs we did. We were really on a roll. And I remember I had said to Danny [Dan Donegan, DISTURBED guitarist] and Drew [Fulk] and Mike [Wengren, DISTURBED drummer] — Drew‘s our producer — ‘give me a beat that’s a good old-fashioned, old-school head bob, something I can really lock in my polysyncopation on. Give me something old school.’ And they did, and, boom, this came out. And it immediately spoke to us. It was a hell of a lot of fun to write and record the songs. Very empowering, very healing for me. It’s a contrast to some of the darkness I was going through last cycle, and being able to celebrate coming out the other end.”
Draiman went on to say that there is plenty of new music on the way from DISTURBED. “We’ve got a lot of amazing new material we’re gonna be releasing piece by piece over the course of the next year or two, culminating with the release of an actual record,” he explained. “But we’re gonna take our time with it.
“These songs are — the problem we had in studio is that so many of them were so strong and so compelling that we had no shortage of single contenders,” he continued. “In fact, we had too many. So we wanna try and give every baby its necessary growth period to be able to grow into a nice big adult song.
“So it’s nice, being able to feel that anticipation and the excitement of it. I can’t wait,” Draiman added. “There’s definitely a lot of the meat-and-potatoes DISTURBED in the collection, but there’s a couple surprises too, and I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised when they actually get to hear everything.”
“I Will Not Break” came out last Friday (February 21) via DISTURBED‘s own label, Mother Culture Records. The track marks DISTURBED‘s first new music since its acclaimed 2022 album “Divisive”.
“I Will Not Break” was helmed by producer Drew Fulk, also known as WZRD BLD (MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, LIL PEEP, HIGHLY SUSPECT),who previously worked with DISTURBED on “Divisive”.
Last week, Donegan spoke to Ryan McCredden of the I-Rock 93.5 radio station about the musical inspiration for “I Will Not Break”. He said: “[That song] came late in the recording process. We were out in L.A. this past September, October and November, just getting the ball rolling. There was no really gameplan of a timeframe or deadline in any way. We had some time off the road with only a handful of shows last fall, so we said, ‘Let’s get back in the room and get things going again and see how the creative process goes.’ And everything was going great. We wrote a bunch of material, tracked it all, and then ‘I Will Not Break’ kind of came late in the session. I just felt like I still had a lot left in me. And I was supposed to be tracking guitars for something else that day, and I just told my producer I felt really creative. I wanted to kind of go with this kind of old-school — I wanted to give something to David that was gonna hopefully trigger kind of that old-school delivery out of David. So we just kind of worked on this heavy groove, this beat, and I just started improvising over it, and as soon as the riff came around, we kind of all just looked at each other, like, ‘That’s the one. That’s the one.’ And then I just continued down that road and put together a rough structure. David wasn’t there at the moment, at the time, so we just kind of worked out the music and put together a rough structure. And when I’d seen him next, I kind of went over it with him and he connected with it. And he kind of gave us those elements that we were looking for — the still melodic, but still quick, rapid-fire syncopation at times and just that kind of delivery we were hoping to pull out of him. And we thought it would be a great lead-off track to share with the fans.”
When McCredden noted that “I Will Not Break” sounds like something DISTURBED could have recorded 25 years ago, possibly inspired by the fact that the band is preparing to embark on a 34-date North American tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of their 2000 debut album “The Sickness”, Donegan concurred. “I was going through the archives and going through a lot of stuff here, my memorabilia, gearing up for this 25th-anniversary tour, and I came across some old demo tapes,” he said. “I had actually cassette tapes, if people don’t remember what those are. Back in the day, in the late ’90s, when we got David in the band, we would just set up a little cassette player in the back of the room and hit ‘record’ and record us — crappy version, but record our practices so we could hear us just improvising ideas. And so I was kind of in that headspace ’cause I was listening to these old riffs and these old deliveries of us just kind of improvising, like I said, and it just had me in that headspace. Actually, one of the song ideas was a riff I pulled from 1998 off the demo and I kind of slid it back into the mix. I have a history of doing that. I have a way of sneaking in old ideas and seeing if it triggers anybody, if they remember it and pick up on it, if it’s been that long ago. But I try to get back into that headspace. And so, even though the riff for ‘I Will Not Break’ is brand new, I was kind of in the spirit of that old-school DISTURBED, and that’s what we were hoping to do — trigger [David] in that that kind of way.”
According to DISTURBED, “I Will Not Break” is “a necessary song, about becoming stronger than the forces that constantly try to tear you down.” The track includes the stirring lyrics “I’ve had enough of feeling terrified, now I’m deciding that I won’t be hiding from anyone,” which encourages listeners to push back in the face of adversity.
“Divisive” was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee.
According to Billboard, “Divisive” sold 26,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release, with 22,000 units via album sales.
On the all-format Billboard 200 chart, “Divisive” debuted at No. 13.
DISTURBED has had five No. 1s on the all-genre chart, beginning with “Believe” in 2002.
“The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour” will kick off in Nampa, Idaho on February 25. Produced by Live Nation, each night will feature two sets of music, opening with DISTURBED playing the five times platinum “The Sickness” in full, followed by a full set of greatest hits. The first half of the tour will feature support from special guests THREE DAYS GRACE, featuring the return of original singer Adam Gontier, and opener SEVENDUST, and the second half will feature special guests DAUGHTRY with opener NOTHING MORE.
Since “The Sickness” was released in 2000, the album was certified five times platinum by the RIAA, spent a total of 106 weeks on the US Billboard 200 chart, and Revolver named it one of “Top 25 Debut Hard Rock Albums.” Billboard said of the title track upon release: “‘Down With The Sickness’ is, of course, the quintessential DISTURBED song, harnessing all the band’s seethe and its now-famous tribal beat and guitar chug into three and a half minutes of alt-metal mayhem. It’s menacing, it’s rhythmic, it’s rebellious.”
DISTURBED recently announced the 25th-anniversary edition release of “The Sickness”. To commemorate the anniversary, the band will reissue the five-times-platinum-certified LP on March 7, exactly 25 years to the date of their original release.
“The Sickness” 25th-anniversary edition is available to pre-order on all formats. The deluxe box set will be available via the band’s web site and digitally on March 7, and via all retailers in North American on March 21.