The elephant in the room
Before I start, I have to acknowledge the recent news that Disturbed’s lead singer, David Draiman, played an ultimate boomer move in signing an IDF missile for Israel, which means he’s a shoo-in to be invited to write an op-ed for Newsweek. As I proclaimed in that very same article, we ( me & my schizo mindvoices ) here @ The Mezunian support neither theocratic sides that worship the same made-up god, but believe that tasty black pepper should triumph o’er all, from the river to the sea. This puts David Draiman @ odds with my political views & therefore he must be purged from the council, the Englesist Magical Socialist Party hath spoken. Also, being serious, signing your name on a fucking missile, e’en if used gainst literal Nazi officials who are child molesters & took Drake’s side o’ the Great 2024 Beef War & not a bunch o’ poor people, is tacky as hell. There’s a difference ’tween somberly acknowledging war as sometimes a necessary evil & psychopathically cheering on the death o’ civilians with your cowboy hat hanging on your mitt like the end o’ Dr. Strangelove.
This article mentions that this album we will be looking @ is full o’ themes opposed to the US’s wars in the middle east, but I will go e’en further: those who had listened to “Liberate” from the previous album we looked @ will recall this Biblical recitation specifically mentioning Israel:
out of zion shall come the forth the law
& the word of the lord from jerusalem
nation shall not raise sword against nation
& they shall not learn war anymore
for the mouth of the lord hath spoken
I guess ol’ Yahweh changed their mind, as they do a lot, & decided, <Actually, fuck it, I want to see you crackas make each other bleed. I’m getting bored as fuck>. This is what makes this the ultimate boomer moment: someone who was cool when they were young growing to 180° into the same war-mongering reactionary they protested against when they were young. Ain’t goin’ be me: I’m going to grow into a curmudgeonly tankie, ranting ’bout how western propaganda just doesn’t understand how glorious China’s vanguard party is @ serving the people’s needs, — while not living there, ’course, since those crackas would put bullets in me if they saw what I was typing ’bout them — as opposed to bougie fake western democracies, thank you.
Anyway, so Freddie DeBoer doesn’t have a crying fit, I won’t cancel Disturbed by not making a mocking review o’ 1 o’ their albums ’cause their lead singer decided to try speedrunning his arthritic band back into the spotlight like Ronnie Radke making transphobic jokes. I’m not letting him or any dumb ethnoreligious war meddle with my schedule I spent a whole 10 minutes typing up in LibreCalc. Luckily I already wrote most o’ these song reviews before I learned o’ this news, so it didn’t affect my reviews & therefore this article ’bout an ol’ millennial nu-metal album that hardly anyone remembers will keep its integrity & this very political album won’t be tainted by a political review.
The actual start
The album we’re looking @ today is yet ’gain not The Sickness, but the 1st Disturbed album I heard, their 3rd album, Ten Thousand Fists, whose singles were all o’er the rock radio in late 2005 when I started to get into rock radio. ¿What stands out ’bout this album to make it worth dedicating a review to it? Nothing: it’s very standard alt metal. ¡Enjoy the review!
1. Ten Thousand Fists
This is definitely a banger, especially the bridge where Draiman puts on his whispery “Midlife Crisis” voice & the final chorus, where the song gets amped up. That said, the “power to the people” lyrics are vague, & lines like “leave the weak & haunted behind” & talk o’ “triumph of the soul” sound sus. ¿But who cares? Nobody listens to fucking Disturbed for Noam Chomskiesque cerebral political commentary.
Grade: B
2. Just Stop
This song is less interesting & less memorable, with its thudding riffs & verses & vague lyrics ’bout relationship problems, which don’t mesh well with the creepy voice Draiman puts on in the bridge. I dunno, it’s just funny to hear the lines, “all I ever wanted was to be a real source of compassion for the moment” sung in a daemonic voice. I do kind o’ like the soulful chorus, I guess. I dunno, I think there were better songs to be a single than this.
Grade: C
3. Guarded
This song is e’en less interesting, & was the lead single, to boot, & I may go far ’nough to say the shrill vocals in the chorus are annoying, especially the dragged out “deciiiiiiiiiiide” @ the end. We also get another weird mix o’ relationship troubles & the occult with talk o’ “guarding yourself from the love of another” followed by, “¿why does it sound like the devil is laughing?”. Surely the devil has mo’ treacherous deeds to pull than making people too afraid to commit. The only minor praise I can give is that I do find the weird rhythm/meter on the verses interestingly weird.
Grade: D
4. Deify
You can easily discern this song’s meaning right @ the beginning, where we hear spooky music o’er clips o’ George W. Bush being praised & saying some bullshit ’bout justice or whate’er. I do find it weird that the song includes the lines, “all my devotion betrayed” & “i was too blinded to see how much you’ve stolen from me”. ¿Was anyone truly surprised Bush would get us into wars, considering the US was already re-engaging in military attacks against Iraq after the Gulf War as early as 1998 & that the Bush administration was already making plans for ousting Saddam @ the beginning o’ his term, before 9/11 & was outspoken ’bout such goals in their 2000 platform? On the other hand, a’least this is slightly less vague than “Ten Thousand Fists” & I always liked the DUH-DUH, DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH riff.
Grade: B
5. Stricken
All right, we actually have a funny song here, thanks to the return o’ Draiman’s patented scat-singing:
ya come on lika woman in suffering
nah e’en mah mamma gonna tell me why
This is just ’nother song with ridiculously sinister diction given to what sounds like a mild relationship misunderstanding, with comparisons to “bloodstained hurricanes” & e’en the holocaust. No, I’m not making that last 1 up. Savor this 2nd verse:
you don’t know what your power has done to me
I want to know if I’ll heal inside
I can’t go on with a holocaust about to happen
seeing you laughing another time
you’ll never know why your face has haunted me
my very soul has to bleed this time
another hole in the wall of my inner defenses
leaving me breathless the reason I know…
& people call “Crawling” melodramatic.
This is not as good as Disturbed’s best songs, but is mo’ interesting than the songs we heard before & has iconic lyrics.
Howe’er, if you want a much better version o’ this song, I present to you:
Grade: ⚡
6. I’m Alive
Yeah, the repetitious “duh-duh, duh-duh” singing @ the start o’ e’ery line in the verses, many times just “ne-ver a-gain”, don’t really gel with me, nor the sing-songy chorus or the bland, “I’m alive”, repeated afterward. Lyrically, this is just a, “I’m-a gonna be myself” anthem, but sounding like it’s coming from a medieval monk, with such vague but grandiloquent diction:
— of living within the world of the jaded
they kill inspiration, it’s my obligation —
&
denying the sin, my art, my redemption
I carry the torch of my fathers before me
Usually when metal bands sing like this it’s when talking ’bout epic battles ’tween dragons & holy divers riding tigers, not people complaining ’bout how they’re not going to be a part o’ this system.
Grade: D
7. Sons of Plunder
This is a much catchier song, especially the internal rhyme in the middle o’ the 1st two lines o’ the chorus where Draiman slows down:
as the countless numbers hunger for worldwide renown
all the pimping sons of plunder will roll up their sleeves
That said, it’s kind o’ weird that they make this “fuck all these other uncreative hacks” song on what seems like a much less creative & much mo’ standard hard rock album than previous albums. I do now wonder if this “new sound” the singer feels surrounded by is in fact nu-metal. 2005 is ’bout when it started to peter out, so this rant that seems like an iconoclastic attack gainst this new fad, in fact, sounds mo’ like jumping on an already-swelling bandwagon gainst an already-dying genre.
Still, I’d take e’en a hypocritical jab gainst other nu-metal bands any day o’er more bland romantic drama songs, especially 1 as catchy as this.
Grade: B
8. Overburdened
¿Apparently this is ’bout soldiers? This seems weird given the lines, “¿how was I considered evil? / pleasures taken in this life”. I wouldn’t consider going off to war living off in hedonism. Still, I like the concept o’ humanity being so wicked that hell is o’erburdened with dead people. It’s a very slayeresque concept, which is now a high art concept I’ve invented. Musically, this is also the most interesting song on this album, with its slow but steady rhythm matching the steady march o’ people in a purgatorylike state. I don’t know if I’ve made this hot take before, but I think Disturbed is better @ saturnine songs than the “O YEA WE GONNA BEAT SOME SHIT BOYS” songs, — yes, that is the precise name o’ the genre — especially on a mo’ general hard-rock album like this.
Grade: A
9. Decadence
In a weird reversal o’ most albums I listen to for this series, this album seems to be getting better as it gets deeper into the deep cuts. I ne’er remembered this song that much before, & I do still find the verses repetitious, — tho that could arguably fit with the subject matter — but did always kind o’ like the sound o’ the chorus; but I ne’er realized till now that this wasn’t a generic song ’bout greed being evil, like the title implies, but uses the mo’ classical definition o’ decadence, literal decay, as imagery for the feeling o’ depression. I dunno, there are some stock phrases here & there, like the ubiquitous “dead inside”, but that metaphor feels both fresh & fitting. Basically, I’m saying Disturbed are mo’ serious artists than Radiohead.
Grade: B
10. Forgiven
I know this song is repetitive, but like “Liberate” from their 2nd album, it’s so catchy to sing along with, “FOOH-GIVAHN TO ME, FOOH-GIVAHN TO ME”. Plus, like the previous 2 songs, I like the story this song tells, this time ’bout a soldier forgiving a solider who killed them ’cause they know that soldier will likely die soon themselves: “you’re just another dead man living”. & the whispery repetitive chanting o’ this song matches this song’s meaning as essentially a death prayer.
Grade: B
11. Land of Confusion
That’s right: the official music video is an AMV. Disturbed knew what was hip with the edgy metal kids @ the time.
Here comes a hot take: while I definitely think Genesis’s original version o’ this song had better music, with its Sega-Genesis-like synths being much mo’ interesting than Disturbed’s plain hard rock riffs & drums, I think Draiman’s singing is mo’ interesting than Phil Collins, especially since Draiman is much better @ staying on rhythm, filling in the awkward pause in “the men of steel… men of power” with “the men of steel, these men of power”. But also Draiman has a mo’ forceful voice, being a metal singer & all, while Collins’ is much thinner & lighter, which certainly works better on softer songs, — I don’t want to imagine Draiman gruffly ah-ahing thru “In the Air Tonight” — but not a song that’s clearly s’posed to have as much force as this.
It actually surprises me that this is the 1st cover I’ve run into so far & only now do I realize how difficult ’twould be to grade it, since in terms o’ lyrics all Disturbed had to do was not pick a shitty song to cover, & they definitely didn’t do that here. I do like that they picked a song from a genre quite off from alt metal, but still fits the tone o’ this album.
Grade: N/A
12. Sacred Lie
While the lyrics are less interesting than some o’ the others on this album, with its standard fantasy/metal/biblical diction o’ “damnation”, “sacred”, “fear”, etc. — to the point that e’en Genius basically just calls it “another song that talks about war” — I do like the rhythm o’ the singing, especially the chorus & the way the pitch rises @ the end; & while the music under the verses is basic plodding, I do like the music under the chorus, especially the drum rhythm.
Grade: B
13. Pain Redefined
This song I’m less keen on. The verses’ vocal rhythm is interesting a’least, tho rather plodding, but the pre-chorus is way too repetitive & e’en mo’ plodding, & the chorus sounds like it should be sung in a church, especially with the line, “I have fallen again”. The music also sounds way too mechanical for the subject matter. I do like how Draiman has to clear something out o’ his throat @ the very end. I’m not sure why it’s on this song, but it is.
“Pain Redefined” is a song about when your sensory abilities become overwhelmed, you lose control of your senses, and you can’t really trust them to make judgement of the world around anymore.
So it’s basically an emo song.
Grade: D
14. Avarice
You know you’re listening to a filler track when the 1st lines are such deep philosophical entreaties like, “politics & evil / all 1 in the same”. In contrast to “Decadence”, this song truly is just greed = bad. Also, the chorus barely sounds like a chorus, having a steady rhythm. The music under the verses & choruses are also plain, especially under the verses, where they’re just this bland “DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH”.
That said, I do kind o’ like the instrumental part after the 2nd verse, especially the horse-stomping drums, & the perishing bridge vocals.
Grade: D
Final thoughts
Yup, that sure was an album that existed. Join me next time as I troll y’all e’en mo’ & do Disturbed’s B-sides album ( spoiler alert: it’s actually better than this album ).
Final Grade: C
