The Sickness
Disturbed
Metal had hit a bit of a low patch at the turn of the century, grunge killed off hair metal but then when grunge kind of ate itself there wasn’t really anything else to fill the gap. The old guard classic bands would always be putting out great albums but there wasn’t anything new. Then we got what was termed Nu Metal and it came from all directions and as with punk everyone got lumped in whether they fitted in the box or not, that is why bands as diverse as Korn, Limp Bizkit, P.O.D and Disturbed all got the tag. Disturbed were really good, it was fucking heavy and obviously driven by Dave Draiman’s voice. The Sickness is a land mark album and it has aged brilliantly.
‘Down With the Sickness’ was my introduction to Disturbed and it corresponds with the MP3 and Napster period when music sort of became ‘free’ for a short period. As a prolific buyer of music my whole life I always felt bad about downloading from Napster, it felt like stealing from the artist. lars would say it IS stealing from the artist. I approached it the same way as I did taping albums when I was in high school, if you really like it you will go out and buy it. Better to tape / download it so you can decide what to spend your cash on that just buy a whole lot of shit you don’t like.’ Needless to say Disturbed were worthy of my cash and I now have pretty much everything they ever released. The highlight is when that vocal / scream kicks in at [0:19] \m/
JAMES DAUBENEY