Jewish Heavy Metal Singer David Draiman Returns to Cantorial Roots with Simon and Garfunkel Cover

February 13, 2017, 7:00 PM

David Draiman considered becoming a cantor before hitting it big as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Disturbed.

Growing up in Chicago, he was expelled from three different yeshivas, and even blew up his high school rabbi’s van after a rowdy night of Purim drinking as a teenager.

Since being a cantor didn’t work out for him, he seemed to do just fine in any case. Seven Disturbed albums and millions of record sales later, Draiman is now best known for his guttural vocal yells, not his melodic cantorial voice.

This year, however, Disturbed was nominated for a Grammy for a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s song “The Sound of Silence.” This song was a total deviation from his normal fare, and it brought Draiman, 43, a bit closer to his cantorial roots.

The group made the decision to keep this track soft and acoustic. Draiman got to showcase his smoother, classically-trained voice, which made him reminiscent of his cantor-in-training days.

“I was so overwhelmed with emotion listening to the way my vocals sounded in that beautiful bed of music,” Draiman told NPR last month. “Not having heard my voice in that way for so long, it was really just very, very overwhelming.”

He also revealed to NPR that he seriously considered becoming a rabbi.

“My religious upbringing was always something that was difficult for me to swallow willingly, but the intellectual aspect of it, the academic aspect of it was very, very appealing to me,” he said. “Studying to become a rabbi or heading down that path is really all about becoming very engrossed and very adept at interpretation of Jewish law, of the Talmud. And I had to learn to find my own truths, and little by little, as they say in Judaism, I ‘left the path.’”

Today Draiman is pretty secular, though he calls himself “intensely spiritual.” He is also a big fan of fellow Jewish musician Paul Simon.

“If we are blessed with winning the Grammy this time, I would have to dedicate it to the original songwriter himself, to Paul Simon,” he said. “No one can really take away the sheer utter brilliance of the composition of that song.”

The Grammys took place on Sunday night. Disturbed lost in the “Best Rock Performance” Category to David Bowie’s “Blackstar”.

Watch the music video for Sound of Silence by Disturbed here:

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