by Vai Helmer

Created on: February 02, 2009   Last Updated: February 12, 2009

I used to be a fairly big fan of Disturbed. Once upon a forgotten time you could hear my shouting out all the words with the worst of them. Then, as with most nu-metal bands, I got bored of them because something fresher and more interesting made my blood pump faster than Disturbed could push it.

The album opens with a nice eerie haunting siren, which folds into a stereotypical riff and the babble that the vocalist has a tendency to utilise. I hate paramore, but at least that shedevil who fronts them can sing with a little conviction. Disturbed lack this from the offset, just churning standard structure songs which lacks verve, charisma, and indeed any reason to continue listening besides for amusement.

The occasional epic-inclined sampels don't really do the world of good for the album as a whole. They seem too quiet and indistinct to add any colour to the tracks as a whole. Better applied they good tear open a whole new dimension of ideas, especially if they actually had anything to do with the lyrics.

Track two, Inside The Fire opens with a fairly standard sample and some creepy laughter, followed by a slightly more frinetic sung section and another riff that seems exactly the same. Every Nu-metal stereotype is thrown out; melodic choruses, hiphop elements, wannabe sung-along chants. They seem A) stitched together B) uninspired C) poorly executed.

The rest of the album is a loop of the aforementioned tracks with minor variations.

Trouble with it all is that it would be awesome as part of a live set! Grittier vocals formed by a hard, long tour and slightly off-balance guitar/drum/bass mix would do a world of good. None of this occurs during the album, and once the disk stopped spinning I saw this was due to a wretchedly flat production. Nice to be able to pick up the bass guitar though, thats a rare bonus for any albums these days. They also don't suffer particularly for having one guitarist. Its means that they don't have two blokes copying one another until the solo where one performs the same old riff whilst the other plays some elevator jingles.

What little good of the album was ground into a compressed blur. Shame really. Deceiver is pretty catchy though; the first and only gleams of aggression seen through the unexpected profanity. The riff is unremarkable though (And by that I mean the drum, bass and two guitar's parts..).

Its worth a look into if you are a Disturbed fan, but otherwise I'd recommend you discover Mushroomhead, or one of those bands who sound take all their inspiration from Disturbed but play so much better than them...

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