Now Disturbed is probably one of my favorite bands, at least surrounding the hard rock/metal genre! They're catchy, heavy and musically great for hooking you in! Entertaining, pretty much! While I do love this band, it's come to me that their quality has sort of degraded.
The Sickness, their first album was a hit and still contain a lot of their most listened to music. It's hard to forget Down With The Sickness, Stupify, Voices and so on. This album was animalistic and pretty darn dark and stood in the alternative/nu metal genre.
Believe, their second album was more Hard rock oriented but didn't shy away from the drive theyd been known for. The songs had soul, power, compassion and still has to me a great replay value. One of my favorite albums, to say the least!
Ten Thousand Fists was... surprising, both in a good and bad way. This was after they had fired their original bassist Fuzzy and replaced him. It seemed like Disturbed had changed their sound yet again, this time totally removing most of the melody in Believe, the loud animal cries in the Sickness and just turned into... yeah, Hard Rock, really. This wasn't Nu metal, alternative, it was straight forward Hard rock. I kinda grew negative to that at first, but nonetheless it's to this day probably their most popular album among the kiddies today who sit infront of the TV playing Gears of War, MW2 or what not... *sigh* Yeah, hard rock AND video game music.
And then... Indestructible. More promises of DARKER MATERIAL AND MORE BADASS THINGS; OOOOOO AH AH AH AH- and that's it. And by their first single you actually thought that was true. Inside the Fire was the first single on there and had to do with suicide, mainly about the devil talking to David after his girlfriend has commited suicide, prompting him to take his own life so David and his love can see each other in hell.
I was hyped as HECK!!! Everyone was! We ate that stuff up! The video was totally creepy and awesome, too! And then, June 3rd it was out in the stores and I got it in the mail (pre ordered it). What I heard was brutal hitting, melody, fast riffing that completely blew me away!!!!!!!... til about the 7th song and through out to the last song, where I just shook my head and cried at this lazy SECOND HALF I HAD JUST LISTENED TO! It only got worse when I played through it again, it became standard and then... dull.
And this year, two years later Disturbed are out with a NEW album titled Asylum, out the 31st August. The new single Another Way To Die (not the Bond one...) was released the 15th of June and... I won't go there. But I was reminded of how disappointed I was after Indestructible.
I did like it, though, the album, at first! It had a few moments... actually, it's like the album works the first half of the album, and then just goes iffy. Like Indestructible is a great intro the whole album, and the song is great, filled with energy and power. Then Inside the Fire comes and it's also very hard hitting and even really dark! Deciever is fast paced and brutal. The Night is a really good moment after these songs because it's particularly slower but holds a great epic feeling into it, being probably the most prominent moment on this record when it comes to music structures. And where the recycling part starts is with Perfect Insanity. Or well, no, it doesn't really. It's hard for me to say but I do really like that song too, and that one's a really old song that Disturbed had back before the Sickness days and to me they did an awesome job restoring it.
After that song Haunted starts which is probably one of my favorites on there, the atmosphere being very eery. And then it kinda goes iffy after that, like the album is starting over and rehashing shit just to fill the album up. Enough sounds a lot like Deciever, infact you could've called it Deciever Part II just as well. The Curse isn't that interesting. It's okay but it really seems off place together with the rest of the songs. Then you have Torn which... I'll admit the solo in there is really damn awesome, but the song itself is so BORING.
And the insult that comes next is these other two old b-side songs, first Criminal and then Divide. Criminal is repetitive and when talking about Disturbed you can usually live with it but I don't like this song much at all. There's too many uses of the word Suffering on this album, and about half of those quantities come from this song, and it just turns into being silly. I guess I just don't like this song because it sounds like Sickness kinda, but covered, you know. It's like a different band.
Divide is... *groan* It's like Criminal. Insulting. It's compelling sometimes but ruined by the solo. Yeah, that's another thing. The solo's just seem like they were PUT there sometimes, just because they felt like putting one there! Not because it fit with the song or anything, solo's are just COOL I guess.
And the final song Facade. This one is... fair, I kinda like it actually, but the problem with this song is that it's not an album closer to me. Which brings me back to the fact that the second half of this album is iffy, messy and uninspired. The first half is EXCELLENT to me.
And you know, isn't it kinda insulting throwing B-side songs onto an album you worked so hard on to make dark and brutal? These are songs they decided NOT to have on the Sickness album because they weren't deemed good enough for a first release.
I'm not saying it's an insult giving us more music. But say Criminal and Divide, you could've put THOSE as B-sides AND had the b-sides for Indestructible on the album instead! You know! Run and Parasite! Those were great compared to Criminal and Divide! Heck! You could've put Midlife Crisis on there!
Now, there's nothing wrong here with the performance of the songs, musically or lyrically (except for a few too many SUFFERINGS, David...), but this is an album that I think I'd just pick the songs I like on it from the internet and download them legally as mp3 files. IMO. First half, great. Second, failure. Ten Thousand Fists, the album that stretches on and never ends is a master piece compared to this. And I'm not saying TTF was or IS a bad album, infact, it has grown on me since my own negative view on it (Believe was them at their finest) and by now I really like the gritty hard rock approach that was on there, which they kinda castrated at the second act. Although the whole fourth album sounds clean, I'll admit is nice, it doesn't help the garbage that comes after Haunted on the tracklist. Or at least Enough.
Kinda ironic. That kinda name for their fourth album and it's so easy to pick apart. Funny how that happens! I am just hoping for a solid new effort by Disturbed at the end of this summer.
