#excuse the shitty highlighter quality i did it on my phone

[afklancelot]

they were cookin w this for the black and white edition tbh. have the house text be slightly off balance from the rest of the text. making the reader doubt themselves trying to measure how displaced the text is on each page it is. you’ll get the full Will Navidson experience there

[happymetalgirl]

Disturbed - Evolution

This is a tough one.

Not to write, well kind of.

Like a sucker punch to the gut after trying to quell a bar fight.

Disturbed were one of the big reasons I got into heavy music in my adolescence, and even looking back, I still enjoy a lot of my favorite deep cuts from albums like Believe and, my personal favorite, Indestructible. For a long time, Disturbed has been the bane of frustrated criticism from much of the metal community for having a rather homogeneous and formulaic writing style, which they do to some degree. But for a long time I stood my ground in my appreciation of what they did with the style they transitioned to immediately after their nu metal debut album put them on the map. Even though they did largely abide by a common formula, their music didn’t really FEEL formulaic. The band played with what seemed to be a pretty convincing vigor, with David Draiman’s strong and well-controlled singing voice a major factor of it, and the rest of the band’s crunchy riffs and respectable solos providing a certainly adequate backing to such a strong vocal presence. The band were assertive. They nailed five #1 albums in a row and they played like they had to prove they deserved it out of all the other groups in the alternative metal field in the 2000′s.

I was a little shaky when the band came back from hiatus with 2015′s Immortalized, for which they recruited Five Finger Death Punch producer Kevin Churko to manage the soundboard, and he basically copied and pasted the same bland production from Got Your Six to Disturbed’s sound. Aside from the unflattering, squeaky clean preset production, the band sounded much more micromanaged in their writing. The band were able to squeeze out a few bangers that hearkened back to albums like Ten Thousand Fists, but combined with what seemed like a bit less fire under their ass after their hiatus, Immortalized sounded like Disturbed sterilized, super clean, super textbook, no surprises... well, one surprise. What Immortalized eventually brought Disturbed was a hit cover: Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”. The band had done a lot of well-received cover songs across their catalog before “The Sound of Silence”: “Shout” by Tears for Fears, “Land of Confusion” by Genesis, “Midlife Crisis” by Faith No More, “Living After Midnight” by Judas Priest, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2, and even a live rendition of Pantera’s “Walk”. But nothing brought them quite the resurgence in popularity after hiatus that “The Sound of Silence” was able to. But that clearly came with a price that the band would have to pay later, and that time is now.

Immortalized felt like executives and radio analysts had a bit too much hold on the band in the creative process, and on Evolution, it really feels like they have taken the reins completely to ensure that the band they invested in, the band that gave them their hit Simon and Garfunkel cover, would yield a similar return. And good God is it a catastrophic shame! Reshaping Disturbed’s approach and image all the way down to the album cover, the first to not feature their iconic mascot (The Guy) since his inception on the Ten Thousand Fists cover, Evolution is quite a painfully fitting title for this stifled, programmed album. For the first time, Disturbed really sound like something their longtime fans didn’t ever want them to be and everything their worst critics had always said they were. I don’t know how much of a fight the band members put up to prevent the album from sounding this way (if they even did) but they sound defeated and puppeteered. The curious part of me even wonders if Draiman’s oddly publicized decision to take out his chin piercings came as the result of label pressure to clean up the band’s image for radio/YouTube or something (if so, I’m sure they’re also trying to find a way to change that super offensive, not-radio-Disney band name without losing the recognition it comes with).

Cynicism about the context of the album aside, Evolution is a tough pill to swallow. Producer Kevin Churko is back to fuck up a good thing and choke the band’s otherwise lion-like roar into the wheeze of an asthmatic cat (appreciate the Sufjan Stevens reference). The album kicks off with the fan-chosen lead single, “Are You Ready”, an adequate, but still kind of safe channeling of classic Disturbed. On any other album from them, this would be an enjoyable, but lower-tier track in the bag. The fact that it’s a highlight here speaks to the tremendous drop in quality on this album. Things go south quickly with the second track, “No More”. The song builds its foundation on a butt rock drum beat throughout the verses and minimal riffage. The chorus is a bit better, but those verses are just unbearable. And then we get the first of several of the album’s soulless, transparently label-pushed ballads: “A Reason to Fight”. The lyrically vague, overproduced acoustic piece is such an obvious attempt at a semi-“The Sound of Silence” original that the label wouldn’t have to split royalties for. And this applies pretty much exactly to the nauseatingly cheesy inspiration of “Hold on to Memories”, the artificially orchestral “Lift You Up”, and the melodramatic acoustic closer, “Already Gone”.

As for the more rock-oriented material, the kids-on-their-damn-phones anthem “In Another Time” sounds again like an overproduced Asylum-esque banger that would almost definitely have sounded better on that album’s production (and with less surface-y topical lyrics). The chuggy, mid-paced guitar riff on “Stronger on Your Own” also really highlights how shitty the production on this album is, with Dan Donegan sounding like he’s playing through a fucking practice amp. Again, it sounds like something that could have had potential to be passable in an earlier studio session, but instead got snuffed out here. “Savior of Nothing” features some refreshingly present cool guitar harmonics, even though Donegan is still far too muffled in the mix. The chorus is pretty lifeless, however, and the momentarily exciting drum fills at the bridge are quickly ruined by a corny electronic dubstep-ish drop, in current year, after all the failed experimentation we saw with dubstep in the early 2010's! God, just give me the cancer now. Perhaps the laziest display of the band’s usual hard rock and alternative metal blend comes in the elementary schooler swearing technique on the drama-critique of “The Best Ones Lie”, which just sounds awkward and forced.

The bonus tracks on the “deluxe” version of the album features a recycled suspiciously titled original alt. metal cut called “This Venom”...like that shit movie needs more shitty music commissioned for it to stain this year. And of course, there’s another acoustic ballad with Draiman seriously crooning in falsetto at some points like a fucking wannabe Adam Levine.

The band expressed that they wanted this album to be like their “black album” and represent a stylistic evolution for them, which is such an odd thing to hear from a band that has clearly taken so much influence from the “black album” they’re referring to. And I feel like a broken record this year with bands stating they want to “evolve” or “progress” as an excuse for an unwelcome diverting into the fleeting promises of career revival and job security that radio-friendliness advertises, but Disturbed’s case is different. They aren’t some B-list group from the 2000′s metalcore movement jumping aboard the Oli Sykes bandwagon. Disturbed are big, and they didn’t need to sell their souls to maintain their status after the success of “The Sound of Silence”, which is why I get the feeling that this was the product of too many hands of boardroom members on the creative wheel. Although, it’s still entirely possible that this really was the direction Disturbed wanted to go. They said they were inspired by the classic rock of their youth, which could be an excuse to appeal to that hotbed of radio boredom, but I can believe it given the more rock-oriented cuts on this album.

Either way, this is bay far Disturbed’s worst album to date, and one that ended their five-record streak of #1 albums. Not that I would revel in a band’s failure (besides, it debuted at #4, which is undoubtedly still a win for the band, and moreso a symbolic stumble for the label), but I hope that such a “slump” either helps guide the band back on track to doing what they have done well, or gives them leverage to get their label the fuck off their backs so that they can get back to doing what they do well without the hindrance of outside influence only seeking to pimp their artistry, seeing that the label probably isn’t going to be getting a hit like the “The Sound of Silence” this time around anyway.

In the end, perhaps the album cover (as boring as it is) without The Guy is better. It certainly represents something. If The Guy is the spirit of the band and their hunger, then it’s fitting that he’s not here on Evolution's cover. Replaced by the image of electrified DNA bases with chains serving as the sugar-phosphate backbone, the Guy-less cover kind of does express the chaining of the band’s fiery nature across this album, something I hope they can break free from on their next project.