Down with the sickness and what lies ahead

By Gary Graff
June 24, 2016

Back in October of 2011, Disturbed surprised fans by announcing an open-ended hiatus after 15 years, five albums — four of which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — and a rash of rock radio and chart hits that made the Chicago quartet an arena-sized headliner. The members — guitarist Dan Donegan, frontman David Draiman, bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren — went on to their own projects, asked at every turn about the band’s future. Little did its fans know that the hiatus had actually ended in early 2014, when Donegan and Draiman began getting together again, quietly forging the path that led to Immortalized, which came out last August and quickly secured it place atop the charts. It’s a new day for Disturbed, but the group’s pulverizing brand of metal is still wholly intact, with Donegan’s assured, meaty riffs as potent as they were back when The Sickness made Disturbed an OZZFest sensation back in 2000. Disturbed has spent much of the year on the road supporting Immortalized and has more ahead, but Donegan took some time out to talk about the group’s return and what lies ahead.

FGPO: How did Disturbed go about ending its hiatus and making Immortalized?

Donegan: The last tour was in South America in 2011, in the fall, and for almost two years we barely saw each other or barely spoke to each other, just because of [geographical] distance, and because everybody was off doing their own thing. I’d say in late 2013 we started making more phone calls just to see where everybody’s heads were at and see how everybody was doing. There was a lot going on in our personal lives. But then by early 2014 we thought: “Y’know, what, the start of a new year, maybe this is the time.” So me and David spoke and said: “Hey, how do you feel? Where are you at with things now that you had time and your son’s born and you’re home with your wife? How do you feel about at least entertaining the idea of writing this year?”

So we got the conversations going and he came up to Chicago and the conversation went good. We got everything laid out on the table. We cleared the air of any bullshit over the years that had happened — nothing crucial, nothing bad — and we said: “Hey, let’s look at the big picture here. Is there the fire and desire to go at it again? Do we feel we’ve got something in us creatively that we want to get out?” Once those conversations started and we started bouncing ideas back and forth just to get the ball rolling, we knew the answer was yes.

FGPO: Was there any apprehension that Disturbed might not come back together?

Donegan: I don’t think, so, no. We have a great deal of respect for each other. It’s a brotherhood. But it was nice to get a break from each other, ’cause our whole career we’ve been surrounded by each other all the time. So it was nice to be able to break away from the roommates out on the road and everything.

FGPO: You were very hush-hush about all this; “The Vengeful One” came out of nowhere last June. Why the secrecy?

Donegan: We didn’t want to speak too soon about it. There was no time frame on it. We wanted to see how this process went since we were entertaining the idea of working with an outside producer, which we haven’t done before, and we just wanted to see how that went, and the writing process, the creative process. So instead of getting people’s hopes up, we just wanted to take our time and see how things went as we went back in the room. And we thought it might be nice to surprise everybody by putting a single out and to actually have an album in the can and a song that drops out of the sky like that.

FGPO: So what was the creative process like?

Donegan: I would send David some riffs, or he came out to my house in Chicago and we wrote a bit. I felt out to Austin a couple of times and we wrote more there. We definitely spent more time face to face, probably more so than we have since The Sickness, when we were all living in Chicago. So that was a nice thing to be returning to, ’cause we had kind of gotten away from it. Once me and him and Mike got rolling, musically, with all that stuff. We got the basic ideas down and then we had discussions of wanting to maybe meet with other producers and just see if we felt like we would benefit from an outside creative opinion.

FGPO: Since Kevin Churko produced Immortalized, you obviously felt you did. What did he bring to the party?

Donegan: We took some meetings with some big-name producers, just to see what they had to offer. It was just a great, eye-opening experience to know that there’s some geniuses that can kind of challenge you and throw these ideas out. When we met with Kevin Churko, we just felt something within the first hour, two hours that we were bouncing ideas off each other. It was pretty obvious that he just seemed like the right fit for us. We just felt like some of the suggestions he threw at us definitely helped elevate those songs to make them even hookier and riffier. It was just amazing. I didn’t really want to leave the studio. After nearly three-and-a-half, four months of recording, I was a little sad when we were done. It just felt like, creatively: “Ah, man, I still want to keep going,” but we already felt like we had such a strong album.

FGPO: You were welcomed back with open arms; Immortalized came out and debuted at No. 1. That’s five in a row, so was it at all a surprise?

Donegan: I think I was pretty confident that the fans were patiently waiting for it, but to be away for that long, it’s always a bit of a risk. It’s tough to be in the music business and walk away from it for four years or so. But to come out of the gate as strong as this, y’know … we felt like we made a great album. We were in probably the best place we’ve been in together as a band in a long time, so everything seemed to be pointing in the right direction. It was just nice to surprise [the fans] with that first single when nobody saw it coming and get everybody fired up again.

FGPO: You’ve been playing some surprising covers and medleys during the shows this year. What’s that about?

Donegan: I just thought it would be kind of fun to do something, take a few big songs — royalty songs, classic songs — and get up there and have a moment just assembling this medley that would make take a fun little turn and pay a little tribute to a few bands in there that we’re fans of, like nine inch nails and U2 and Rage Against the Machine. “Baba O’Riley” we threw in there, too. We always like messing around with a few little covers and just have fun. It’s just kind of a fun moment to take a turn in the set, so it’s just a nice little twist.

FGPO: Does that let you do anything different as a guitar player, to cover those songs?

Donegan: Well, with the U2 cover [“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”] we kind of changed that and put our stamp on it and kind of riffed it out a little bit more. Other than that the other ones stay somewhat true to the original form, just to have more of a crowd-participating moment and get them singing and have them feel like a part of it. I never really liked bands just going through the motions of playing their songs and getting off; we try to do what we can to incorporate the crowd and make them feel like they’re part of the show.”

FGPO: You’ve had great success this year with Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” — NOT the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Disturbed. Are you surprised by the response?

Donegan: I’m not surprised because I feel that we did such a great version of it. I am surprised that the response came so quickly on it; I thought because it is such a departure for us that the fans might need a little bit more time to digest it, because it’s gonna catch everybody off guard.

But it just goes to show that a good version of a song, fans are gonna recognize that, and I’m glad they connected with it so quickly and almost immediately when the album came out and it went up on YouTube and people were commenting, and just the positive feedback, instantly, was definitely pretty overwhelming and surprising on that end of things.

FGPO: How did you go about creating that particular arrangement?

Donegan: I think that the challenging thing was to take such a classic song and figure out how do we show our respects to it and trying to stay somewhat true to it but do enough to it to where it’s ours as well. I think the delivery of it and just making it a little more haunting and really killing the performance really brought out the lyrics even more.

FGPO: Have you been working on more material since you finished Immortalized?

Donegan: My gears are always turning. I’m always trying to think ahead to what the next step would be in the future. But right now, being out on the road, it’s always focusing on just the production and making any adjustments we need to make. But I’ve got a lot of stuff in the archives. I always save riffs for the future. Once we’re not thinking about the production aspects or the flow of the set as much, we can just focus strictly on playing; at that point when there’s down time out here on the road we might mess around. We have some recording equipment out here, a ProTools rig, so there’s always time for us to kind of mess around a bit and just save some ideas for the future.

FGPO: So will Disturbed’s next move be to another album or might there be another hiatus in store? 

Donegan: It’s so hard to say because right now we’re firing on all cylinders and the energy’s high and we’re excited. So my answer today is: “I’m pumped and I’d like to just roll and keep things strong.” But it could be a different story in a year from now after grueling touring and the wear and tear of just non-stop go, go, go. Plus, being away from our families; we’re all dads and husbands and we’ll have to see how that weighs on our decision at the time, too. So it’s hard to say, but my first instinct is I would like to continue. I don’t anticipate us taking a long hiatus again. I think, if there was some break, it would be minimal. I’d assume we’ll all be on the same page as that.