Music

Disturbed is walking down memory lane and starting a new era at the same time.
The Chicago-formed heavy rock quartet kicks off The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour on Tuesday (Feb. 25) in Nampa, Idaho, celebrating its five-times platinum debut album, which spent 106 weeks on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, it’s just released “I Will Not Break,” a characteristically defiant track that is the first taste of Disturbed’s ninth studio album, which will be followed by additional singles before the full-length’s release — most likely in 2026, according to frontman David Draiman.

“We’re going to release track by track over a set course of time,” Draiman, who now resides in Miami, tells Billboard. “We have so many strong songs in this collection of material, so many single contenders, we’re just gonna push ’em out bit by bit. Every musician is most in love with their newest creation, but this body of work was so inspiring it made us want to change our strategy. We have some incredible surprises, too — not all meat and potatoes, stereotypical Disturbed, either, definitely a lot of left turns for us. We’ll see when those actually get to see the light of day. We can’t wait for all of it to be out.”

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Guitarist Dan Donegan feels the same way, describing what’s coming as “a well-rounded body of work. There’s some interesting stuff in there, some really great ideas, some very cool moments. It’s a good blend of everything that’s become Disturbed — some of those old-school moments, those animalistic moments. We’re always gonna have those big, melodic moments with David to showcase showcase some of his vocal jobs, some great, heavy riffs — some of my favorite riffs I’ve written so far. I think fans will be pleased.”

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The heavy-hitting (and certainly familiar-sounding) “I Will Not Break” makes its intent clear with its title. Draiman — whose vocal follows a minute and 16 seconds of hard grooving by Donegan, drummer Mike Wrengren and bassist John Moyer — says it was inspired by “the darkness that I had to go through during the last touring cycle,” which included a 2023 divorce and learning to single-parent his son, as well as aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel and the rising antisemitism he saw surfacing around the world.

“It’s definitely a song I think is very needed right now — definitely I needed it,” Draiman explains. “It’s an empowerment tune. It’s about overcoming adversity. It’s about coming out the other side of the darkness, about not letting the pressures that mount in your life break you.” He adds that the song — produced by Drew “WZRD BLD” Fulk (Lil Wayne, Knocked Loose, NLE Choppa), who helmed 2022’s Divisive — was one of the last to surface in the process.

“We were definitely in a stride of sorts, and definitely feeling it,” Draiman says. “I said to the guys, ‘Give me something, give me an idea that has the old school, head-bobbing feel, that familiar rhythm that I can get really syncopated with and do what they do. So they gave me that. Too easy.”

While fans wait for more new tracks and the eventual album, Disturbed will deliver a 25th anniversary edition of The Sickness on March 7, adding B-sides, demos and previously unreleased songs to flesh out the package, which housed the No. 5-peaking Mainstream Rock Airplay hit “Down With the Sickness” and the Alternative Airplay top 10 “Stupify.”

For the tour, Disturbed will be playing The Sickness, which was produced by Johnny K, in its entirety and in sequence, which Draiman describes as “weird” since those hits, usually saved for the end of the night, will come significantly earlier. “We’ve never done anything like this. I think it’s going to be really cool,” Donegan adds. “It’s our biggest album and our big debut, so we want to honor it from start to finish, playing some of these songs we haven’t played in a long time, and then have a second set of things we did after that.”

Disturbed has plenty to draw from there as well, with 27 top 10 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits — a dozen of which hit No. 1, including remakes of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” All told Disturbed has scored five platinum-or-better albums.

“I remember when we were playing local, before we were touring outside of Chicago, we used to say, ‘I hope we get to the point where we can fill the Riviera Theatres of the world’;…maybe 2,000 seats,” Draiman recalls. “Now we’re playing arenas and packing them with 10, 15, 20,000 at a time. It’s very surreal. It never loses its luster, and it’s still amazing to experience the nice, steady, gradual ascent we’ve been able to have over the course of our career.”

Donegan’s take is that Disturbed “weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we weren’t trying to emulate a certain band, either. We just took all our influences and improvised and wrote the songs, and it started becoming something. But we weren’t chasing anything else; we were just writing the music that we wanted to write.”

The guitarist considers “Down With the Sickness” illustrative of that philosophy. “We were just going into the rehearsal room in the late ‘90s, jumping on our instruments and warming up,” Donegan remembers. “Mikey did this tribal beat…it was never intended for anything, just warming up, and I said, ‘Keep doing that for a minute’ and just started improvising the riff and developing it. David’s listening to what we’re doing and we put that little pause in it, before it kicks in heavier, and out of nowhere in the break he does the signature ‘wa-ka-ka-ka!’ thing and we’re looking at him going, ‘What the hell…?!’ It was just an instinct, just a reaction to this tribal beat and the riff. We were taken aback by it; we didn’t know if he was gonna turn it into words or what, but it just kinda stuck. We were trying to find our own identity…and that definitely helped.”

For The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour Disturbed is also putting together a museum of sorts for VIP package buyers, including instruments and stage outfits, concert posters and vintage t-shirts and merchandise. The group has also announced a European leg of the trek with 17 dates kicking off Sept. 29 in Copenhagen. For Draiman, Donegan and their bandmates, the nostalgic dip has been an invigorating reminder of where the band came from as well as jet fuel for its future plans.

“I just love the fact we’re still hungry,” Donegan says. “We’ve bene very blessed and fortunate to check off bucket list items. We’ve played with pretty much all our heroes — Metallica, Judas Priest, Pantera, Queensrÿche, all these classic rock/metal bands we’ve grown up to. We just played with Iron Maiden in Mexico City in November; that was a huge bucket list show for us. And there’s been a lot of bucket list venues. And we still love doing it. There’s an incredible addiction to performing, to being on stage and that interaction with the crowd, to going into the studio and making new music, all of it.”

Draiman will check off another item of his own on July 5, when he’ll be part of the Back To The Beginning concert in Birmingham, England, where Ozzy Osbourne and the original lineup of Black Sabbath will play its final show supported by a who’s-who list of heavy metal and hard rock acts. “I’m elated to be part of it, humbled and honored,” he says, noting Disturbed’s appearances on Ozzfest tours helped break the band. “It’s the most seminal frontman and band for hard rock and heavy metal; the second record I ever bought, right after Kiss Destroyer, was (Sabbath’s) We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll. I love Ozzy. I love the Osbourne family. They’ve been so supportive, such a huge part of we’ve become who we’ve become. We could not have done it without them, so I’m intensely grateful. We all are. I hope that I can just do my little part to pay tribute to their legacy.”

The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour North American itinerary includes:Feb 25 Nampa, ID Ford Idaho Center Arena*Feb 27 Denver, CO Ball Arena*Mar 02 St. Louis, MO Enterprise Center*Mar 04 Milwaukee, WI Fiserv Forum*Mar 06 Minneapolis, MN Target Center*Mar 08 Chicago, IL United Center*Mar 10 Detroit, MI Little Caesars Arena*Mar 12 Louisville, KY KFC Yum! Center*Mar 14 Boston, MA TD Garden*Mar 17 Washington, D.C. Capital One Arena*Mar 19 Montreal, QC Centre Bell*Mar 21 New York, NY Madison Square Garden*Mar 29 Cincinnati, OH Heritage Bank Center^Mar 31 Cleveland, OH Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse^Apr 02 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center^Apr 04 Buffalo, NY KeyBank Center^Apr 05 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena^Apr 07 Toronto, ON Scotiabank Arena^Apr 09 Indianapolis, IN Gainbridge Fieldhouse^Apr 12 Charlotte, NC Spectrum Center^Apr 14 Raleigh, NC Lenovo Center^Apr 16 Birmingham, AL Legacy Arena at The BJCC^Apr 18 Sunrise, FL Amerant Bank Arena^Apr 23 Duluth, GA Gas South Arena^Apr 25 San Antonio, TX Frost Bank Center^Apr 26 Fort Worth, TX Dickies Arena^Apr 28 Oklahoma City, OK Paycom Center^May 05 Seattle, WA Climate Pledge Arena^May 07 Portland, OR Moda Center^May 09 Sacramento, CA Golden 1 Center^May 10 San Francisco, CA Chase Center^May 13 Inglewood, CA Kia Forum^May 15 Phoenix, AZ Footprint Center^May 17 Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden Arena^*with special guests Three Days Grace and opener Sevendust^with special guests Daughtry and opener Nothing More