No joke this time. It’s finally time we examine what may be 1 o’ the most memetic albums in all nu-metal, The Sickness, the album with the world-conquering “Down with the Sickness”.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but @ 1 point in my life Disturbed was my favorite band, ’tween when e’en lamer bands like Papa Roach were & when I stopped relying on mainstream radio for music discovery. Now my favorite metal music is real art, like Ghost SiIvaGunner & DJ Cumberbund Pig Destroyer, Cattle Decapitation, Anal Cunt, & Death, which I listen to from my vinyl record player while sipping my glass o’ Sangiovese Grosso Kraken rum in my purple rope. While Ten Thousand Fists was the 1st album I listened to, The Sickness immediately became my favorite o’ theirs ’pon listening to it. As I hinted @ in my review o’ Ten Thousand Fists, that album has lost much o’ its charm for me. ¿Will the same happen for The Sickness?

E’en many Disturbed fans look down on this album as being “simple”, but they’re just fake hipsters ( if they were real hipsters they’d be listening to actually serious music, like Aborted Fetus ). As we will see, some o’ the songs on this album are, indeed, simple, but there’s also a bit o’ variety, especially compared to Ten Thousand Fists, which was hardly math metal, which I’m pretty certain is a real genre, or later albums, which mostly coalesced round the same sound, albeit 1 I moderately enjoy ( Evolution & onward would coalesce round a new sound, & that sound was “sucking like Imagine Dragon My Nuts ’Cross Your Face” ). Songs like “Fear”, “Numb”, & — for better or for worse — “Droppin’ Plates” employ styles & sounds that Disturbed would ne’er try ’gain.

1. Voices

This was always my favorite song off this album, essentially a better version o’ “Down with the Sickness”, with faster, catchier verses that are much funner to sing ’long to like “Liberate” from their following album, — albeit also as repetitive ­— a mo’ melodic chorus with mo’ interesting pitch variations, & a bridge that is o’er the top in a mo’ fun, fast-paced way than “Down with the Sickness”’s infamously cringe bridge, especially since the fact that the singer is s’posed to be insane makes it feel mo’ fitting & lack the pretensions o’ “Down with the Sickness”. Admittedly, the opening “¡SOOOAAAAH!”s aren’t as iconic as the famous “¡OH-WAH-AH-AH-AH!”s, but you can’t have e’erything.

In essence, this song has aged ’bout as well as a Disturbed song could & is still a certified spookyween banger.

Song Grade: S

Music Video

I love the concept o’ this music video: some dorky cubicle worker listening to Disturbed with cheap, shitty headphones — what I imagine to be the average Disturbed fan, tho nowadays we go a step further in being asocial by just working from home — while some bald ghost man who’s his schizophrenic illusion tells him to tie up his boss & coworker who keep fucking with him while he’s trying to work, or… tossing the papers on the floor to the woman who handed him too much work with a smug smile. Honestly, these violent fantasies are tame as fuck. E’en mo’ tame, when the man breaks, he doesn’t e’en do anything mo’ than take off his tie, mess up his hair so he looks like Jesse Pinkman, & go attend a Disturbed concert. Not the most exciting concert, either: it looks like it’s in some guy’s garage they weren’t using @ the time, so, sure, you guys can use it for you music video, I guess.

Music Video Grade: B

2. The Game

In contrast to the goofy vague “¡I’M SO CRAZY!” lyrics o’ the previous song, this song is way mo’, well, disturbing & a much less fun song to sing ’long to, since it’s impossible for me not to interpret this as an anthem from an abuser, specially when it ends with lines like, “THAT LITTLE BITCH SHE WENT AND SHE TOLD A LIE / NEVER FUCKING LIE TO ME”. Obviously I don’t think any members o’ this band wanted to portray such behavior as positive any mo’ than they think having “violence fetishes” is a good thing ( & in fact they have an anti-abuse anthem in the form o’ “Façade” off their 4th album ); but the exploitation o’ violence gainst women as a source for drama & horror — the “dead girl” effect — is a cheap effect that, like the general machoposturing — or “toxic masculinity”, as all the hip zoomzooms call it now — & edgelordism o’ nu-metal, hasn’t aged well — tho, to be fair, Deftones did e’en more o’ the same thing @ the time, with “Digital Bath” from their magnum opus, “White Pony”, exploiting the image o’ a woman being electrocuted to death in a bath tub for cheap horror, & has received li’l flack by critics. ’Course, the main character here presents this as mutual abuse, — mutual abuse that the singer apparently likes — but since the woman in question ne’er gets a word out herself, it’s a mystery to the listener whether or not the singer is being honest or making this up to justify his own violence. Thank you for reading my literary analysis o’ “The Game” from Disturbed in the House We’re Droppin’ Plates’s Pulitzer-winning classic, “The Sickness”.

In terms o’ the actual music, I have to admit the catchy chorus does make it hard not to want to sing ’long, being e’en faster & having e’en mo’ sudden changes in tone, pitch, volume, & speed to really drive home how bonkers the singer is. In contrast, the verses have a weaker, softer, mo’ morose voice to them, especially the bridge, sounding mo’ jarring in contrast & sounding mo’ like an actual killer. This is not the most mindboggling artistic decision, but is certainly mo’ interesting than, say, Five Singer Game Grumps’ nonstop “I’M SO CRAZY & ANGRY I DON’T GIVE A FUCK” growling that only e’er sounds like not just an actor, but a bad actor. David Draiman may not be anywhere close to winning an Emmy, but he’s a’least on the level o’ a theater club member, which is high standing in the world o’ nu-metal. I also like the goofy wub-wub music that plays thru most o’ this song, like this “game” is some ICP-esque game show.

Grade: B

3. Stupify

A song so garbled that hardly anyone knows what the hell Draiman is singing — including the censors for the radio versions, which oft censor the innocent “animal” during Draiman’s opening monologue, but let Draiman’s constant birdlike squawks o’ “¡FYAACK!” run unabated. That’s fine, as when you read the lyrics, they just read like random amping, leading me to believe that Draiman composed these lyrics based more on what words he could sing in an interesting rhythm rather than for their meaning: the 1st verse has him complain line after line ’bout how nobody will give him 1 teeny li’l fuck; — or, sorry, I mean, “¡FYAACK!” — the 2nd verse has him give shoutouts to people from all different walks o’ life, which seems to have nothing to do with the rest o’ the song, but, believe it or not, has mo’ to do with this song’s intended meaning than the rest; the pre-chorus & chorus have the singer seemingly arguing with his fraying mental state, accusing someone o’ “playing around with [their] narrow scope of reality” & babbling nonsense, like asking if “we could put it on credit”; & then, as the cherry on top, during the bridge Draiman chants what turns out to be the Hebrew word “תפחד”, or “tefached”, before pleading with some woman who came out o’ nowhere to not deny him & not be afraid. Apparently this song is an anti-racism song inspired by Draiman’s Orthodox Jewish parents forcing him to break up with a gentile girlfriend when he was a kid. As it turns out, it is us, the listeners, who are truly stupefied. Also, I think they spelled “stupefy” wrong.

While I find the pre-chorus & chorus insatiably catchy & fun to sing ’long to & like the weird chant in the bridge, specially since it has real cultural context & is not just vague Arabian Nights jibberish by some pretending cracker ( looks askance @ Godsmack’s “Voodoo” ), the verses are repetitive, meaningless, & thudding, & the music is pretty boring, with its basic riffs that just sound like walls o’ downtuned guitars & bass — I love downtuned guitars & bass, but not just solid walls o’ it — during the opening & choruses, &, specially, those annoying squeaky guitar riffs during the verses.

Song Grade: B

Music Video

Most o’ this music video is just the band rocking out in a super yellow grungy room with boarded up windows — the kind 2000s music videos loved. ¡But check out these dance moves from Draiman!

This is interspersed by random images o’ some poor, dirty kid in tattered pants sitting on a bed with a long stare & Draiman dressed in a straightjacket in a mental institute — which I guess the kid is in, too. Then the kid looks @ a fish, the fish tank explodes, & then he rises in a T-pose like Jesus, but then is replaced by Draiman in the same pose. What this has to do with racism, I have no idea; but I have long since given up on trying to comprehend this song.

Music Video Grade: C

4. Down with the Sickness

( Unfortunately, I could not find an uncensored version o’ this song on YouTube ).

There’s a reason this song is memed ’bout so hard — arguably memed the most o’ any nu-metal song. E’erything in this song is begging for you to remember it: the opening tribal drums; the animalistic “¡OH-WAH-AH-AH-AH!”; the goofy chorus that sounds like the singer is saying, “COME MONKEY DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS”, but is, tragically, only saying, “COME ON GET DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS”; &, ’course, the infamously hammy bridge where the singer shouts & threatens retribution gainst “mommy” after his pleads for her to stop hitting him go unanswered — a bridge so deranged that most radio stations cut it to keep listeners’ sanity. I have read from multiple sources that “mommy” is apparently a metaphor for mother nature & how, like, the world itself, like, totally abuses you, man, tho Genius’s game theory is that “mommy” is, like, society, man, & it, like, has “fascist tendencies”, & is possibly also Ness from EarthBound. Either explanation is so hilariously pretentious that they ne’er fail to bring a smile to my face.

So it will surprise my readers that my favorite part o’ this song was ne’er any o’ these elements, but the least-considered verses, where Draiman starts by singing a calm chant, only to gradually build into louder & mo’ erratic singing, as if the singer is going from sane to insane within the verses.

’Course, I can’t do a review ’bout the memetic quality o’ “Down with the Sickness” without bringing up the meme possibly just as famous, Dicksturbed”s “Down with the Gheyness”, a true LGBTQIA+ anthem for my fellow rainbow people, which I, unfortunately, can’t embed ’cause YouTube is homophobic & it’s age-restricted & for some reason I can’t tell YouTube that my blog isn’t G-rated.

Song Grade: 👇🤒

Music Video

I’m disappointed in how tepid this monumental song’s music video is: it’s just the band on stage playing while showing clips o’ them standing around or walking toward stage & their fanbase rockin’ out, yo. Literally the most cliché music video.

Also, I didn’t remember this, since it’s been years since I’ve listened to the radio edit version o’ this song where they cut out the “no mommy” part, — or years since I’ve listened to a radio @ all, really — but I just noticed how janky & abrupt the cut is.

Music Video Grade: F

5. Violence Fetish

& then you have a song literally called “Violence Fetish”. There’s not much to say ’bout this song: it plays the same trick “The Game” does with the soft morose voice during the verses as a contrast to the lurid title, tho here it’s a bit too squeaky for my liking. I do like the melody o’ the pre-chorus’s “you’re pushing & fighting yooooour waaaay…”, only to abruptly shift to growling, “¡YOOOOU’RE RIPPING IN HAAAAAALF!”. I also find the opening lines o’ the chorus, “bring the violence / it’s significant” weird in the contrast o’ such a trashy concept & the somewhat highbrow “significant”, especially the weird way Draiman o’erpronounces the word.

The music is a mix for me. I kind o’ like the bass thumps o’ the verses, but am not a fan o’ the screeching squeaks coming from the guitars during the 1st 2 choruses.

Grade: B

6. Fear

Now here’s an underrated song, & the 1st to truly use the electronic elements o’ this album to great use, opening with what was to me an iconic Halloween-type melody that seems to foreshadow the music style o’ Ghost later, only for Draiman to suddenly shout, “FEAR SOMETHING AGAIN” — which I always thought was “HE’S HAUNTING AGAIN” as a kid, but whate’er — followed by an onomatopoeia that I actually think is superior to “¡OW-WAH-AH-AH-AH!”: some distorted, faded, “¡HA! ¡HA! ¡HA!” or “¡AH! ¡AH! ¡AH!”.

The verses, backed by similar spook synths, are when Draiman starts to get into the kind o’ grade-A cheese whiteboy wannabe-gangster rap that nu-metal is famous for. Just listen to these hard-ass lines straight from the streets o’ Chicago:

punk ass, ¿are you listening? ¿can you hear me?
¿or are you deaf & dumb to my language?
¿do the real words seem to hurt you?
well, put ’em up, motherfucker

Tho I think e’en cheesier is when he actually says, “stand back, brother, take your hand back” in the bridge.

The 1 part I don’t like ’bout this song is those damn guitar squeaks during the interlude just after the 2nd chorus. Thankfully they don’t last too long.

Grade: A

7. Numb

An e’en mo’ underrated song that sounds nothing like any other song Disturbed has made: a doom dirge with stretched out guitar noise while Draiman sings in his deepest most morose voice I’ve e’er heard. The verse lyrics are all repetitive, following the pattern o’, “[verbing] in/out/down/now, I’m”, but that fits the numb theme o’ this song, & still manages to make it weird by breaking the sentences in half in each line, ending each like with the beginning o’ the next sentence as if the singer’s numbness is delaying him. It’s not quite as good a depression song as Three Days Grace’s masterpiece, “Drown”, especially since I don’t think the extremely scratchy voice Draiman uses during the choruses really fit all that well, but is a highlight on this album.

Grade: A

8. Want

Unfortunately, after that there is a falloff on this album, starting with “Want”, a song that’s repetitive in a way that doesn’t fit particularly well with this song as “Numb”, both in the verses constantly going, “your mind won’t let you…” & the verses going, “[verbering] now, [verbering] now…”.

This song is very gross, which I guess makes it effective. It’s some guy smarmily telling some woman, “your mind won’t let you see that you want me”, which sounds like a guy who won’t take no for an answer, which is made all the skeevier when talking ’bout this woman “quivering” & “harkening”. This guy sounds like he’s so obsessed with this woman’s mind that he wants to rip out her brain & put it in a jar so he can goon to it. I mean, he literally sings out, “¡SAVOOOR HER MIIIIIIIND, YEAH!” @ the end o’ the bridge. This all very well may be intentional — I must reiterate that this is a band called Disturbed, & believing that heavy metal singers truly want to murder people or be the devil is an amateur mistake. Still, this song goes so far in its goal to be repellent that it generally repels me from listening, which is either a great success or a failing, depending on what you want from art.

Also, lots & lots o’ guitar squeaks.

Grade: 🤮

Music Video

I’m shocked that this song o’ all songs has a music video. It is, like “Down with the Sickness”’s, just concert footage, but with the twist that some o’ the footage is very ol’ footage from I think when they were much younger. Or maybe it’s a fan-made video. All I know is that the singer has hair.

Music Video Grade: D

9. Conflict

& now we have a song e’en mo’ repetitive, constantly reiterating, “[something something] ENEMY” with generic thumping drums in the background. The chorus doesn’t e’en do much to differentiate it from the verses, still reiterating that same pattern, just slightly faster. The bridge tries to add some desperately-needed differentiation, sonically, a’least, with lower, soupier singing & music, but it’s still repetitive “DUH-DUH-DUH” rhythm & none o’ it is anything that wasn’t done better in earlier songs, like “Numb”.

Grade: D

10. Shout 2000

The obligatory 80s cover song. Tho I don’t consider this cover as a song itself near as good as their cover o’ “Land of Confusion”, or as good as half the songs on this album, unlike “Land of Confusion”, I do think this cover is much better than the original, since, honestly, Tears for Fear didn’t do a great job on their original version. They weren’t e’en shouting, for god’s sake. That’s not to say I don’t think this cover could’ve been done better: it’s nowhere the loudest song on this album itself, & all the weird electronic effects & verbal digressions — including a reference to Vanilla Ice, o’ all things — are distracting. None o’ it is funny ’nough to be memeworthy, but it also doesn’t particularly sound great. That said, this song’s all right. It’s inoffensive — not unlike the original Tears for Fear song, which didn’t have amazing lyrics, either. Honestly, I don’t think Disturbed could’ve made this all that great without just making a whole ’nother song, given how meh the original is. “Mad World” would’ve been mo’ fitting, but probably too cliché. Also, given Disturbed’s style o’ doing covers, it probably would’ve been a much worse cover, anyway.

Grade: C

11. Droppin’ Plates

Now here’s a memeworthy song. It is criminal that this song is ignored. ¡Just listen to it! ¡It oozes cheese @ e’ery word! I would have to just transcribe the entire song to list all its goofy lyrics. ’Course, the big 1 is the 1 I keep using to describe them, “Disturbed in the house, we’re droppin’ plates”. As that line indicates, this is Disturbed’s rap-metal song — ’cept sung from the perspective o’ someone whose only experience with rap is the Fresh Prince. Part o’ me thinks this song has to be an intentional joke; but Disturbed apparently were so proud o’ this song that they used part o’ the line “gonna fight the war & use my music as a weapon” to name their special tour.

But I also have to highlight “droppin’ plates on your ass”, which he repeats multiple times, “a little something for your ear hole, ¡GET UP!”, & the chorus, “you know I’m talkin’ ’bout / recogniiitiooooon”, sang/rapped in a weird mix o’ Draiman trying to sound like a rapper & his quiet dirge voice. I also love how this song starts with some

“Dropping plates” is a term where the plate is a vinyl record, basically meaning that Disturbed is making and releasing songs and albums. The whole song, as a matter of fact, is about how their music is the best around. Don’t start picturing David Draiman smashing plates on his kitchen floor anytime soon.

Genius

It’s too late: you can’t stop me.

Grade: S

12. Meaning of Life

& if that wasn’t goofy ’nough, this album ends with a sex song that’s as sexy as a Davey and Goliath fanfic, with Draiman shouting ’bout how he wants to “GET PSYCHO”, wants you to “give in, give in, DECIDE”, & wants “your power glowing, juicy, flowing, red hot meaning of life”, which I guess means the singer has a fetish for fucking a girl while she’s on her period, since I’m pretty sure cum isn’t red — I guess she’s his cherry pie. The last line they were so proud o’ that they repeated it in both verses. Then in the bridge Draiman goes full scatman while singing ’bout “pretentious whores”. That’s not the Scatman’s World I was promised.

The music… fuck, nobody cares ’bout the music. It’s a god damn Disturbed song ’bout being thirsty.

Grade: 😈🍆🍑🩸

Conclusion

So, ¿does this album still hold up? Sorta yes & no. Musically, no: most songs seem to just throw instruments & especially synth effects @ the wall to create loud noise rather than having much memorable. I don’t think anyone’s going to compare any riffs in this album to the likes found on classic Black Sabbath or Slayer, & those god damn guitar squeaks must’ve been chosen just ’cause they’re loud, not ’cause they sound good. Draiman begins to show his singing — & let’s be real, acting — versatility, but develops his singing better on later albums, especially Believe.

Howe’er, this is an album that sticks in your mind better than most “better” metal. It finds that perfect balance o’ luridness greater than most nu-metal, but not to the exaggerated, gory extent that bands like Cannibal Corpse do, which goes so far that it’s too easy to become numb to it, especially when the growling vocals are so o’erdone that you can’t e’en understand what they’re saying, in contrast to Draiman’s singing, which finds the balance where you can sorta hear what he’s saying most o’ the time. The softer theatrics & pop-catchy melodies, if anything, adds to the weirdness, as do the broader, mo’ down to earth lyrics, especially since they’re still weird — not in viscerality, like most metal bands, but in how ill-fitting they are, like they’re inaccurate translations from ancient texts. Essentially, what Disturbed has ’bove most other metal bands is camp: if other metal bands are the George Romero or Wes Cravens o’ metal bands, Disturbed is the Roger Corman: fascinating in how off the map it is & fueled by their shared lack o’ giving a fuck how nonsensical their work is. For better or worse, only a band like Disturbed could make songs as fascinatingly weird as “Stupify”, “Want”, “Meaning of Life”, “Droppin’ Plates”, &, yes, “Down with the Sickness”. ¿Could you imagine anyone else e’en coming up with a bizarre, false slang term like, “down with the sickness”? ¡Nobody e’er said that! ¡Nobody said “droppin’ plates”! Those were not things people said until Disturbed unleashed them on the world like the sins o’ humanity ’pon opening Pandora’s Box. I could probably survive fine without Ten Thousand Fists, & maybe e’en Believe; ¿but The Sickness? We would lose a lot a culture with that loss.

So while I don’t imagine this album getting anywhere near the top o’ Rate Your Music, where silly things like “musicianship” & “complex themes” play the highest importance, on Mezun’s scale o’ memeworthiness, The Sickness earns its legendary status.

Album review: S