 
Back in October 2011 Disturbed announced that they were going on an hiatus and during that time the members of the band spent some well-deserved time with their families whilst also working on a number of different side projects with John Moyer joining supergroup Adrenaline Mob, David Draiman creating new industrial metal project Device and Don Donegan and Mike Wengren creating a new band called Fight Or Flight, all of these bands went on to release albums and ep’s but when it came to touring things started to crumble with the side projects coming to an end or members leaving.
Disturbed fans knew that Disturbed would return to the music scene one day with a new studio album but no one knew when and as each and every year went by the fans started to wonder could this year be the year and then back in June the band updated their website with a new Disturbed logo and a short video of the band’s mascot ‘The Guy’ on a life support machine and after a couple of days of teaser videos an 18-hour countdown appeared on their site and as soon as the countdown reached zero the band unleased the video for their comeback single ‘The Vengeful One’ and also released full details of their sixth studio album ‘Immortalized’ including artwork, track listing and pre order details.
Now two months on and the wait is over as Disturbed are back and have just unleashed ‘Immortalized’ which happens to be an outstanding 13 track album which runs for 53minutes and is easily up their alongside ‘The Sickness’ and ‘Indestructible’ as one of the best Disturbed albums ever released.
The album opens with a short instrumental piece titled ‘The Eye Of The Storm’ and it is an interesting opener which is easily going to set things up perfectly on the live circuit at future Disturbed gigs before they unleash the well-loved melodic metal that we have all come to love over the years. The album title track ‘Immortalized’ kicks in next and its exactly what Disturbed fans have been crying out for in the near 5 years that Disturbed have been away from the music scene as the song is a tub-thumper which opens in style with huge riffs, banging drum beats and those well missed unique vocals from David Draiman which sound as strong as ever and will have you hooked and singing-along in seconds.
Up next is ‘The Vengeful One’ which happens to be the lead single from the album and the bands come back single, its slightly slower than ‘Immortalized’ but has all the elements of a classic Disturbed single with Mike Wengren’s drumming shining throughout. ‘Open Your Eyes’ is easily one of the catchiest and most melodic songs Disturbed have ever created, it has radio friendly written all over it yet also goes out with a bang with extremely heavy instrumental work, and overall the song is generally such a solid fist pumping sing-a-long rock n roll tune which is going to go down an absolute storm on the live circuit.
‘The Light’ see’s Disturbed ditch the heavy rock and go down a more near indie sounding route and it surprisingly works really well as the song is easily one of the stand out tracks on the album where the whole band show that they have matured and also mellowed during their downtime and have come back with ideas, writing styles and songs that no one would expect from Disturbed.
‘What Are You Waiting For’ see’s the heaviness return and when the chorus hits you know about it as David Draiman sings “So what you waiting for, tell me what your waiting for” over and over again. ‘Save Our Last Goodbye’ is quite an emotional number about losing someone, it starts up with a voice message skit before David Draiman sings about not hearing someone’s laughter and generally missing someone whilst Dan Donegan lays down some of the best riffs the album has to offer and towards the climax of the song the vocals from David Draiman sound so much like those of Serj Tainkan. ‘Fire It Up’ is a song about weed and actually opens up with a hit being taken from the bong, the song is easily the weakest track the album has to offer but that does not mean the song is actually that bad.
Now Disturbed are well known for throwing in a cover song on their albums and I never thought they would be able to come up with a better cover song than their cover of ‘Land Of Confusion’ until I heard their cover of ‘The Sound Of Silence’ which happens to be a cover of the classic Simon And Garfunkel song, the song starts off really mellow and once again we get to hear a side of David Draimans vocals which we never knew existed, over time the song builds up until it’s epic climax.
The album comes to a close with a double whammy of heavy songs with ‘Never Wrong’ and ‘Who Taught You How To Hate’ and as soon as the album comes to a close you will find yourself pressing play again as you eagerly want to retake in the past 53minutes of your life.
Overall it’s so good to have Disturbed back and ‘Immortalized’ is such a solid metal album with a much loved melodic streak and it has been well worth the wait, let’s just hope that more albums follow on sooner rather than another hiatus.
5/5
Review by Trigger
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