One of the biggest tours this summer will be Rockstar Energy Mayhem, which will be co-headlined by Slipknot and Disturbed. As Disturbed singer David Draiman admits, his band will be one of the most melodic groups on the bill, which also features Machine Head, Mastodon, Underoath, The Red Chord, Suicide Silence and others.
If Disturbed were touring for their anthemic 2005 album, Ten Thousand Fists, there might be more of a problem with the maggots and death metal diehards, but Disturbed will be out there supporting their upcoming disc, Indestructible (out June 3), their angriest, darkest, most explosive album since their 2000 debut The Sickness.
(Click "more" to read on, or to skip straight to the MTV Headbangers Ball Blog Podcast with Disturbed Frontman David Draiman).
While the melodies on Indestructible are richer and the harmonies more prevalent than those by every other band on the Mayhem bill combined, the sentiment and hostility aren't all that different. The dominant themes? The world is a s--thole, bad things happen to good people and money and fame are just fuel for heartache, conflict and anxiety. To a large extent, the album was musically and lyrically inspired by the past three years of frustration, pain and bad luck experienced by frontman David Draiman. Rather than keep his personal life to himself, the singer had torn his wounded heart from his chest and lay it before his cheering fans, revealing the tales of chaos, deceit and demoralization that have challenged his will to remain indestructible.
And, as he re-examined the years of turmoil, Draiman opened up old wounds that were previously too painful to explore, such as his past history with heroin, the drug-related death of a teenage girlfriend and the adversity he battled to become one of the most dominant frontman in mainstream heavy metal.
In our in-depth and revealing podcast interview, Draiman discussed the band's three-week tour, which starts April 26 in Little Rock, Arkansas and runs through May 17 in Columbus, Ohio; the Rockstar Energy Mayhem tour that kicks off July 9 in Auburn, Washington; the torrents of aggression behind Indestructible; the meaning of the album title; his past battles with substances and circumstance; his experience playing for U.S. troops overseas and the betrayal he's encountered in his search for a soul mate.
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