I’ve been wanting to talk about some recent albums here, but kept forgetting. I was discussing this with Dan on Twitter today, and here’s some thoughts on the latest album from Disturbed.
Upon further review, I’ve discovered that my digital edition got hopelessly jacked up and some tracks were rearranged, with a few flat-out corrupted. As such, my initial impression of the album was not very favorable. Taking an opportunity to listen to the full album, as intended, it’s fairly good.
The songs are all in the Disturbed formula, there’s nothing here you haven’t heard before. The strong bass, often harmonizing with the guitar, the simple yet powerful drums and of course David Draiman’s phenomenal vocals. If you liked any of the band’s previous work, you’ll like this. If you haven’t… well, just move along, there’s nothing here that will change your mind.
Intro track aside, the first half of the album is pretty damn good, with some nice variety to the songs. The second half kind of muddles together, without anything jumping out at you, though. It’s not bad at all, just the energy built up in songs like “Asylum” and the incredible “Infection” don’t carry through to the end.
Much good music has meaning, a message even. Many bands (I’m looking at you, Linkin Park) choose to beat their listeners over the head with that message. Disturbed’s sognwriting is more subtle. If you’re paying attention to the lyrics, you’ll be able to draw parallels to current events, but the message never dominates the song.
The album features a “hidden track,” one of the ones that was out of order for me, making it seem INCREDIBLY odd on first listening. With it in the proper place, it’s less jarring, but still not terrible good. Disturbed has dome some great covers over the years, but U2’s “I Still Haven’y Found What I’m Looking For” is not among them. Draiman’s unique twist on the lyrics is nifty, but the Disturbed-style instrumental melody just doesn’t fit at all.
Asylum’s Deluxe Edition features two forgettable live tracks, “Down with the Sickness” and “Believe.” I’ve seen Disturbed live several times, and hear many awesome variants to these songs. It’s sad that they chose to include live versions that are exact reproductions of the original album versions. A live track is a chance to show fans a different side of the band, and Disturbed failed with that here.
Again, it’s by-the-book Disturbed. Now that I have a CORRECT edition of the album on my player, I’m enjoying it much more than initially.
