Disturbed's David Draiman: This Is My Biggest Strength as a Frontman "There's a difference between a vocalist, a singer, and a frontman," the musician says.

Disturbed's David Draiman: This Is My Biggest Strength as a Frontman

"There's a difference between a vocalist, a singer, and a frontman," the musician says.

Posted Feb 01, 2019 01:27 PM


1

During a conversation with Full Metal Jackie, Disturbed vocalist David Draiman talked about being a frontman, as well as the band's new album "Evolution."

You can check out a part of the interview below (transcribed by UG).

David, you're a seasoned performer, what's your greatest strength as a frontman?

"It would have to be trying to gauge the necessity of amping people further, pushing them further, knowing when to 'crack the whip' of sorts. It's funny, it's not something that can be taught.

"It's something you can only learn by doing. There's a difference between being a frontman and entertaining, singing songs as you expect to hear them and all of that. To me, there's a difference between a vocalist, a singer, and a frontman.

"A frontman takes on a completely different role. It becomes the focal point of the laser during a live performance where all of the energy that's being collectively brought in from the band, he chooses to project, or shape it.

"There's a tremendous responsibility that comes with it, tremendous power that is unleashed with that, liberating and empowering 'power.'

"And knowing how to wield that in a way that you tend to drive people on is an art, it is not something that is easily learned. Took time for me to master it."

How has incorporating different musical ideas invigorated you as a vocalist?

"It's all new challenges, and it's all really - as far as recording and writing are concerned for us - for the most part, uncharted territory, a lot of stuff on this record.

"It was liberating, to be honest, it was really nice not having to worry about if something felt heavy enough, it was nice not feeling like you have to stay in any kind of parameters of any kind. Wherever our artistic inspiration took us, we followed.

"In the beginning of the process, it started out as being 'ballads,' they have their own elements of heaviness to each of them."

Power ballads?

"Not in a classic sense. This is hardly 'More Than Words.' In a different way, certainly. If power ballads were overwhelmingly dealing with the subject of death, I suppose you could it 'power ballads.' Little death, a little bit of depression, a little bit of addiction..."

So you guys covered a lot of different territories, it must be great to say, 'We will do what we want to do on this record.'

"The most bittersweet element of the beginning of this particular cycle was calling the record 'Evolution,' talk about how there's so much that's so very different, and yet the first single ['Are You Ready'] that you end up hearing from the record is probably the song that's most reminiscent of the 'Sickness'-era of Disturbed.

"So you're all, 'Did you evolve? This is different?', You know, you say that you're ready, are you ready?"

Talking about the brand new Disturbed album called 'Evolution,' which broke the mold. How much of that was calculated and how much is just a reflection of the natural growth of your musical preferences?

"No, this wasn't calculated in any way. This all happened very naturally, very organically. We have been wanting to do an acoustic EP for years.

"The beginnings of us working on that material ended morphing into this record, which took many different stylistic turns. Fate has a strange way of working."

Covering Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence' opened a huge door of possibility for Disturbed. How did the success of that song directly affect the development of this new album?

"It affected the development just in terms of allowing us to develop unbridled. To literally have the confidence to take the left turn we took on this record.

"Don't get me wrong, the old pathways that we used to go down were equally as fulfilling, old-school meat-n'-potatoes Disturbed that any fan could sink teeth in and be satisfied with. The success of 'The Sound of Silence' cover gave us the courage and the desire to push things further.

"I think it was an amazing turn of fate, it was an amazing opportunity for us, and I think on this body of work both heavier songs got better as the result of it and the ballads came out more beautifully."

How much has the course of your life and your life's experiences been interwoven into the music as both a listener and a musician?

"In every way, you could possibly imagine. My experiences are interwoven into the fabric in every album. They're kind of an integral part of every album we've ever written.

"The one thing I can say about this record that makes it a little bit more unique is that for this record and the past record, I've been looking more to the other guys in the band to feed me, inspirational matter, themes, even occasionally lyrics that I write.

"This time, life experience, collective life experiences, were very much reflective on this record.

"It's very unfortunate that we shared life experiences of this nature, but I think that they're all life experiences, whether they are lost or dealing with someone that you are in a relationship with who has the demon of addiction or depression that they're dealing with, or dealing with betrayal or the fact that society pits us against one another, they keep us controllable.

"They're all kind of things that I think we can really internalize, understand and feel."

Songs can go from one extreme to another as they're developing, from what you've envisioned to how they turned out. How did the songs on 'Evolution' evolve?

"In terms of what I've envisioned, it's impossible to say. There was no grand scheme going into it, it's not like we had this battle plan, this was what we needed to do. The whole idea was to try and figure out what we were doing, to be honest.

"So first we needed to see these acoustic ideas that we have been working on to their fruition, and while we were in that mode, we started creating more, and before you knew it, we were 5-6 songs deep of what you would call the 'ballads' of the acoustic material.

"At that point, we all needed a good shift in the gears of the electric and fix back there, but by the time we stepped back and looked at the body of work at that point, it was very obvious that this needed to be two separate entities, that this needed to be an acoustic EP.

"I'm a big believer that with any piece of art, the art is hiding within the clay and you need to reveal it, and with music, it's very much like that. I'm a very big believer that the art, particularly when it comes to music, will let you go where you should be, we just were letting our creativity be our guide."

11

You can check out "Evolution" below.