Author: uylrjp

Disturbed emerged from the late 1990s nu metal scene to become breakout stars of the new millennium, thanks to the success of their debut album The Sickness. In November 2000, as the band prepared to play their debut UK show, Metal Hammer sat down with the Chicago band to talk success and the state of rock.

Intelligence is still a rare commodity in rock, occasionally even an off-putting one. With the instant ego inflation and meteoric rush of fame that being in a band can afford you, it’s understandable that we want our stars to be slightly taken over by the circus: dumb-as-y’like, and thrown into the mess to amuse us with idiot-savant pratfalls and the reassuring feeling that they won’t think about it all too much.

More importantly, in these times when bands are all starting to say the same things, the notion of intelligence is handed out like confetti: string a sentence together, sing about something other than titties ’n’ beer, have a coherent message, avoid all contact with Fieldy from Korn and it’s easy to be hailed as an ‘informed voice’, a ‘keenly self-aware’ model of rock’n’roll intelligentsia.

It‘s all horseshit, of course (lyrical monomania so often equals spiritual myopia), but when you speak to David Draiman of rising Chicago nu metal stars Disturbed, the first thing you notice is how intently he speaks, how he considers what he says before he says it, and how much of what he says shows he’s given – and gives – the world more thought than your average megalomaniac frontman.

With Disturbed’s debut album The Sickness riding high in the US, and the rest of the world anxious and ready to find out what all the fuss on the Ozzfest tour was all about, Metal Hammer is catching up with David and guitarist/programmer Dan Donegan and 2001’s first nu metal star on the eve of their sell-out debut UK Astoria show to ask them how they plan to spread The Sickness.

“From the beginning, what all of us realised was that this was a band of four individuals who prized their individuality above everything else,” explains David, speaking about the band’s formation. “That connected me, Dan, Mike [Wengren – drums/programming] and Fuzz [bass] immediately because we knew none of us would take a back seat in this. It’s a democracy of conflicting personalities that creates something whole and coherent and real. With any one of us not in on that, the whole thing would fall apart. This came out of us, this grew from us like a sore. There wasn’t a specific band or bands we were trying to emulate. Yes, we each individually have our own influences, but it is truly a product of the four of us combining that makes our sound unique.”

“Me, Fuzz and Mike had had a band and we’d gone through so many lead singers we were wondering if we’d ever find one who was right,” says Dan. “It wasn’t so much that they were all bad singers, it’s just that there’s a real lack of ambition in rock music at the moment. People are really happy to just retread old ground and try and make a sound that’s as close to a facsimile of bands that they know are popular and successful.

“It’s rare to find other people who were intent on making something new. When David came in, we were totally just blown away that someone other than us wanted to be original, had the balls to come to music with something to offer, rather than going on others’ coat-tails.”

“Every single one of us is a perfectionist at what we do,” states David. “We don’t miss a thing. So many bands seem to think that music’s just indulgence, this excuse to say all the stupid shit you want. For us, music is about being concise, about focusing your ideas and your beliefs into the clearest communication you can. With four people engaged in that process of purification and formulation, it’s inevitable that the results are powerful. That’s what happened with The Sickness.”

If this all seems a little rags-to-riches at this point, think again. “This was a struggle for us,” says Dan. “We were from suburban Chicago and there really wasn’t a scene at all, apart from kind of vague alternative rock.”

David continues: “Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Veruca Salt, yadayadayada… We were pretty much stunned for a while, and we had to build up a following and prove that we were an economically viable entity before some of the inner-city clubs booked us.”

“We decided to stop trying to take on those people in those clubs because they had such a snotty, elitist attitude to any music that wasn’t extremely polite middle-class indie,” says Dan. “As soon as a lot of them heard our tape, they basically said in their heads, ‘I am never booking this band.’ It was a prejudice that we had to fight against from the start.”

“We worked hard,” agrees David. “It was very demanding and, crucially, we had no connections, no friends in the business. A lot of bands now, you get the feeling that it’s pure nepotism that gets them anywhere. It’s like if you want a record deal, don’t bother writing good songs or making good music – just go to the right party in the right town at the right time and make the right friends and you’ll be a star overnight. For us, isolated in Chicago, that just wasn’t an option.

“I think a lot of new bands, especially if they’re not from LA, are getting frustrated with the traditional ways of getting heard. With the internet and the ability to create your own demos and CDs, a lot of bands are just bypassing the industry altogether, happening without its permission and building up a fanbase all by themselves.

“We made tapes, flyered everywhere, handed out free demos to kids who came to our shows, bombarded companies until they’d let us have showcase gigs, built it up gradually, and eventually it snowballed. Word of mouth is an incredibly powerful thing, even in this electronic age, and it worked in our favour.”

Dan picks up the story: “Pretty soon, people started coming to our shows, asking clubs why they weren’t booking us, basically wanting to see us play the songs we’d recorded live, but initially, we were not well received at all. Chicago clubs were so clique-ish, you had to be part of a certain crowd to play in those clubs. And it was especially bad for us since we were a heavier act, and metal is kind of looked down upon there. So we had to fight tooth and nail to get to play at all.

“The suburbs were actually more into the metal scene than Downtown ‘hip’ Chicago. So it was the fans, not the supposedly ‘in the know’, who made this happen for us. We’ll remember that forever. If you don’t have a close relationship with your fans, you might as well be jerking off. It was the fans who got us here, completely.”

So how are you coping with being liked?

“I’m constantly overwhelmed by it all,” says Dan. “The opportunities we’re getting now are just unbelievable, and it would be real easy to let them go to our heads. But at the same time, every time we meet one of our heroes it brings us back down to earth and makes us more determined to show the kind of determination they have. I mean, jeez, we’ve just been to Tommy Lee’s house, hung out with Pantera, hung out with bands like Static-X and Godsmack – bands that a year ago we were saving up pennies to buy their albums. It’s just insane!”

“A lot of our life in the past year has been totally fucking surreal,” says David. “Sometimes you snap back, realise where you are and it just destroys you – you cannot believe it’s happening to you. The other day, on Ozzfest, we were hanging around with Pantera. I’m sat there sharing a bottle of JD with Dimebag Darrell and Dan’s chatting with Phil Anselmo and we just suddenly look at each other and we’re smiling ’cos we just can’t believe it’s happening!”

“It’s a good reality check,” says Dan, “because no matter how well we’re doing, we’re talking with guys who have made four or five albums, have been in the business for years longer than us, and it makes you realise, ‘OK guys, calm down, you’ve made one album. There’s a hell of a lot longer to go yet.’”

“Right now, we’re all having to get used to the idea that what we love doing is what we’re doing,” says David. “That’s the oddest thing at the moment. But we’re confident because we know we’re on to something that no one else is. No one else sounds like us or says what we’re saying. Every band says that, I know, but for us it’s our raison d’être. We’re gonna keep on saying the unsayable and playing the unplayable and the fans will respond to that. Despite all of the people telling us we’ve cracked it, we’re nowhere near doing everything that we want to do yet.”

Do you want to be stars?

“I don’t think it’s about naked ambition or getting heard for the sake of it,” explains David. “I don’t wanna be a star in any conventional sense – I want to change the idea of what a star should do. A star shouldn’t back up or support the system that’s put them there – a star should question it, blow it apart. We live in a world where you’re barraged by stimuli – whether you open up a magazine or you turn on the TV, or your parents preach to you, or the church, or whatever you believe in. It’s not allowing you any ability on your own to develop yourself as an individual. Half the time I see teenie bands and even rock bands being all sweet and plastic and basically saying, ‘God bless the American way!’ and I just wanna rip their heads off – it’s so antithetical to my notions of art and expression that it’s like they’re speaking in Venusian or something.

“We can show the audience their own strength and create a situation where we can both – band and crowd – feed off each other’s strength; the strength that society calls a disease. Disturbed are viral.”

And catching. Get dosed up on The Sickness and realise things are only gonna get more intriguing the more time David Draiman can open his mouth and preach his gospel. He’s got The Sickness and he’s got the remedy. Do you wanna be cured?

Originally published in Metal Hammer in November 2000

Andy Fairweather Low first gained attention fronting the cutesy pop-rock band Amen Corner in the mid-60s. From their ashes came a proggy outfit called Fair Weather in 1970. Soon after, he was solo, and toasted a big hit single with the soft-rocking Wide Eyed And Legless in 1975. But the Welshman’s agility as a singer/guitarist sideman connected him to peers including Eric Clapton, and he’s had a long career as superstar support for Roger Waters, George Harrison and Bill Wyman, among others. As a teen he learned the ropes with songs such as Bessie Smith’s Gin House Blues, which Amen Corner covered for their first single release. Bringing him full circle, the song is included on his latest album, The Invisible Bluesman, a collection of vintage covers.

Jimi Hendrix

On tour with him in 1967, I was nineteen and witnessing this thing first-hand, two shows a day. Sometimes, when he got to Wild Thing at the end of the night, tuning-wise it was wild. Amen Corner had residencies in London at Blazes, Tiles and The Speakeasy, playing soul and R&B. If you were in a band, you’d hang out there. One night Jimi was there and decided to play I Can’t Turn You Loose, with us. He borrowed Clive [Taylor]’s bass, turned it upside-down and took it from there. A few months later he got up and played Neil Jones’s guitar. I decided to play bass, until he turned around and said I was playing in the wrong key. I had no idea what key it was in!

A little later, I’m in New York, staying with our manager Terry The Pill, who worked for Hendrix’s manager Mike Jeffery. We get a call – could I come to the studio to do some backing vocals? When I go over, Jimi’s recutting Stone Free and Roger Chapman’s there. So you have Larry The Lamb and Archie Andrews on backing vocals. Jimi was a quiet, lovely, polite man.

Pete Townshend

I first saw Pete with The Who in 1965/66, as a punter at the Porthcawl Pavilion. He is one of my all-time heroes. I was staying with Glyn Johns while he was working on Who Are You. Pete said: “Tell Andy to come and do some backing vocals.” I did about five tracks, the first being the title track. In 1993, while Pete was drying out in the US, I was asked to join The Who for a few months until he came back. When he returned, I stayed on, but after a few days I realised I wasn’t needed so I said: “I think I’ll go and play tennis.” Then Pete’s Psychoderelict album came out in 1993, and he asked me to tour with him in America. That was a really interesting event, a musical with actors like Jan Ravens. I learned a lot from Pete with his chord shapes and songwriting.

Roger Waters

In November 1967, Amen Corner played our first tour ever on a bill with Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Move, The Nice, Heir Apparent and Outer Limits. We were all in one bus apart from Floyd, who travelled on their own. Our manager, Ron King, overheard one of them say something about our keyboardist Blue Weaver, and he threatened to break their legs. They’d open with Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, and it would completely baffle me, like: “What are they doing?” One day in around 1984 I get a call: “Hello, Andy, it’s Roger Waters.” Who? I hadn’t paid attention to their names. He asked me to come up and see how we got along, with a tour for The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking in mind. I went to see him, and we didn’t just get along, we talked all about the tour. I played with him for about twenty-four years. He treated me with unbelievable respect, was superb company and very funny. And you know what? Set The Controls became my favourite thing to play live [laughs]!

BB King

I was in Los Angeles in the eighties for a record company meeting, went to a club, and BB was playing there. I stayed behind and got his autograph. All of a sudden, Eric’s gonna do an album with him, Riding With The King, and we go out to Santa Monica. The hotel’s on the beach, I get to go in the studio for a month, and every day BB King is in there. The whole time I was there he never called me by my name. It was enough to be part of it in the band. To use a Roger analogy, he was one of the first bricks in the wall.

Eric Clapton

I was a big fan of Eric and used to have a poster of him in Blind Faith at Hyde Park up on my wall. When I was in Amen Corner I decided I was never going to be good enough to be him, but I could make a living pretending to be Steve Cropper. Then when I got my solo deal with A&M, my second album [La Booga Rooga] was produced by Glyn Johns, a really good friend. He then produced Eric’s album Slow Hand [1977] while I happened to be staying at his house. I met Eric then, and during the recording of Backless I was sitting in the control room being a pest and a fan. I was having trouble with my label. Glyn told Eric, and he sent me a telegram of encouragement. I couldn’t believe it. Eric asked me if I’d join him in the winter of 1990 to 1991, at the Albert Hall. I went: “You serious?” This was a life-changing moment. I’d work with Eric for thirteen years. I loved it – all the sound-checks, the rehearsals, the album recordings. I love his voice, too. And he’s introduced me to so many fabulous musicians. I’m so proud of what we’ve done together.

Joe Satriani

I was playing at the Fillmore West on a blues tour with Eric and, unbeknown to me, Joe was in the audience. Glyn Johns was going to record a live-in-the-studio album with him [self-titled, 1995], and Joe had never recorded live. Glyn suggested me as rhythm guitarist. I went: “Joe Satriani? Me?” Glyn said: “I think you can do this.” I said: “Give me his number!” I called and said: “Joe, you do know what I do…” And Joe was like: “Yeah, I saw you with Eric.”

I end up in the studio with him, about four feet away, and I can’t think as fast as he can play. Phenomenal control, knowledge, and a lovely man too. He showed me a part for the track Luminous Flesh Giants that went ‘da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da’, then he’s off somewhere else. But I thought to myself: “I can do the da-da-da-da bit!” I could also do a part that was one note for the track Killer Bee. I arrived with a certain amount of guitar noises that I had, and I thank Joe for holding my hand with that record.

Tom Jones

In all my time on the circuit from the 1960s, I never bumped into Tom Jones at all. In 2015 I get a call from Ethan Johns, Glyn’s son, who’s doing an album, Long Lost Suitcase, with Tom. He would like me to play guitar on it. Yeah, absolutely! It was bluesy, soulful, a bit of rock, a step away from Delilah, or It’s Not Usual – which I bloody love, by the way. We went to Free House studio in Bristol, owned by James Dyson’s son Sam, incredible place. We recorded like they might have done in the fifties; I’d sit by my amp, and Tom would be in the middle of the room on an old RCA mic. I did backing vocals on one of the tracks. Tom has sung with Little Richard, everyone. I told him: “Finally, you got to sing with me!” [laughs]. A warm, down-to-earth man to play with, and Ethan captured some of my best guitar work.

Edie Brickell & Paul Simon

One of the connections I had through Eric was with Steve Gadd. Steve had worked for twenty-five years or more with Paul Simon. He knew Paul’s wife Edie, and was going to produce an album for her. He said: “Do you fancy being on it?” So there’s me, Steve on drums and bassist Pino Palladino – another proud Welshman – and we’re called The Gaddabouts. We do one album [self-titled, 2011], then we do another [Look Out Now!!, 2012]; Edie is the most prolific writer. Most of the stuff I played, the riff came from her.

One time, I lost my porkpie hat, a treasured possession, travelling to New York from Heathrow. Paul Simon comes into the session and says: “Andy, where’s your hat?” I told him I lost it on the train. Four days later, Edie says: “Someone wants to see you, go outside.” It’s Paul, and he’s got a couple of hats which he tries on my head. “That’s your size,” he says. And he gets this company in New York to make me a hat! He also came in to record with the harmonica from The Boxer, which I played for a fairly simple part. I had to gaffa tape the holes to make sure I played the right notes.

George Harrison

I could never get “Wow, he’s a Beatle!” out of my head when I was working with him. It all started after his manager, Roger Forrester, had been in touch to tell me that George would like me to play slide guitar during his Japanese tour. I said: “I don’t play slide because I can’t be as good as Ry Cooder. Give me George’s number to explain.” I rang George and he said, “I’ve never heard you play, but everybody seems to like you so why not come and see me at [Harrison’s Victorian mansion] Friar Park?” So I did. At that time things were not going well for me and I was driving a Volkswagen Polo. He came out to meet me and said: “You have to drive that?” and we started laughing. He then suggested playing something from [Harrison’s album] Living In The Material World. I had painted a bungalow to that soundtrack, I knew it inside out. We began with Give Me Love and I sang the slide part. When we went on tour, he got me doing the slide to My Sweet Lord. I could never relax until I got past that part. He had a fantastic sense of humour and he was unbelievably easy to be with.

Lemmy

He was the roadie for Hendrix when we were on tour, but I didn’t find that out until later. Many years on, I was at the 100 Club [in London]. He was at the bar, I was at the bar, and we said hello. Lemmy was totally himself and could connect with anyone.

The Invisible Bluesman is out now via The Last Music Company.

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer with 23 years in music magazines since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo’s had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson’s favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper’s Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she’s been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators. 

‘Can we ready ourselves for the outrage?’ Sam Carter warned us when Architects released Whiplash last year. The lad is raging. You can sense it even as opener Elegy floats into existence via fluttering EDM. You can feel it just under one minute later as the track explodes into life, courtesy of a scything melodeath riff and a paint-stripping scream, quickly followed by a nasty, guttural roar that’s comfortably more visceral and, well, heavy than anything on 2022’s The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit. That was a great record – one where Architects distilled the ambitious experimentation of For Those That Wish To Exist into a taut, hook-laden set of arena-ready anthems – but The Sky, The Earth & All Between is a whole different animal.

Where much of the band’s recent output has traded in heartbreak, despair and existential soul-searching, The Sky…, for the most part, finds Brighton’s finest simply seething. Yes, there are still big choruses and catchy hooks abound – Elegy’s ‘Again, again, again’ refrain will stick in your head for days – but there’s a sense of raging urgency that permeates almost every nook and cranny of the album’s 42-minute runtime.

Whiplash berates tribalism and culture war madness amid beefy, mechanical riffs and smatterings of industrial noise, Sam exasperatedly asking if everyone’s done ‘fucking around’ as the world burns around us. Seeing Red takes aim at shallow fans who demand a return to old-school Architects heaviness (‘Time hasn’t frozen, why do you want me to scream?’). It’s a heavy song, packing thrashing guitars, pick-scraped riffs and a vintage ‘BLEGH!’, but it comes wrapped in glitching electronics and cheerleader chants bound to annoy the piss out of anyone insisting on a lazy victory lap of the ‘good ol’ days’.

In fact, the album is full of welcome left turns alongside those considerable slabs of all-out heaviness. Blackhole sneaks a full-blown 80s stadium rock solo in amongst juddering tech metal riffs, clattering drums and low-end bellowing; Brain Dead is scuzzy hardcore sprinkled with glitching hyper-pop, featuring a cameo from genre-splicing punks House Of Protection; Everything Ends is pure post-That’s The Spirit pop metal, featuring a guest spot from LA-based singer Amira Elfeky; the closing Chandelier is an emotionally dense burst of shimmering EDM-core.

Everything Ends isn’t the only time Bring Me The Horizon’s shadow looms large, likely because Jordan Fish is behind the production desk, bringing the same brand of glossy industrial metalcore to straight-up bangers like Judgement Day that he helped hone on last year’s excellent Poppy album.

Of course, Architects did more than most to help shape the sound and feel of modern metalcore, and on The Sky, The Earth & All Between they’ve channelled their current influences into something diverse, impactful and engaging, driven by a particularly vibrant performance from Sam, unquestionably the album’s MVP. ‘No more lies if I disappear’ he sings softly as Chandelier fades out. Hopefully Architects aren’t going anywhere for a while yet. Yes, they’re sounding angry, but they’re also sounding as vital as ever.

Merlin moved into his role as Executive Editor of Louder in early 2022, following over ten years working at Metal Hammer. While there, he served as Online Editor and Deputy Editor, before being promoted to Editor in 2016. Before joining Metal Hammer, Merlin worked as Associate Editor at Terrorizer Magazine and has previously written for the likes of Classic Rock, Rock Sound, eFestivals and others. Across his career he has interviewed legends including Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Metallica, Iron Maiden (including getting a trip on Ed Force One courtesy of Bruce Dickinson), Guns N’ Roses, KISS, Slipknot, System Of A Down and Meat Loaf. He has also presented and produced the Metal Hammer Podcast, presented the Metal Hammer Radio Show and is probably responsible for 90% of all nu metal-related content making it onto the site. 

Doom metal has never surpassed Black Sabbath. 55 years on from the clanging of bells and a riff so malevolent it sounded like the universe being rent in two, doom has produced countless acolytes to the altar of Tony Iommi and co., but never produced a band that could concievably claw their way out of the underground. Until Green Lung, that is.

London’s own folk-doomsters have been tearing their way up the pecking order in recent years, from drawing massive queues outside The Underworld at Desertfest in 2022 to dominating Bloodstock’s main stage in 2024. So a packed-out show on home turf at the 2,300 capacity Kentish Town Forum feels as much a career-making moment as it does a victory lap.

They’re not alone in bringing the dark side into the spotlight. Tour supports Unto Others are doing their own part to revitalise a long-standing metal staple, their Danzig-meets-Metallica brand of goth metal perfectly suited to big rooms. Latest record Never, Neverland unsurprisingly dominates the set, fist-in-the-air tunes like Butterfly, Momma Likes The Door Closed and Suicide Today fitting nicely alongside older bangers like Heroin and Give Me To The Night that’ve helped elevate their darkly seductive offering.

But Green Lung are something else. The riffs to opener Woodland Rites drop like a guillotine and the Londonersjust look so right playing on a massive stage to adoring, screaming crowds, offering up a bewitching mix of esoteric folk charm, thumping heavy metal riffs and hooks you could use to haul a leviathan. In combining the existential dread of Black Sabbath with the larger-than-life theatricality of Ghost, the likes of Mountain Throne, Reaper’s Scythe and Hunter’s In The Sky become all-conquering anthems.

There are also a few tricks up the band’s sleeve. On Song Of The Stones – a folksy ballad that sounds like a Wicker Man B-side – most of the band disappear, leaving Matt Wiseman to clatter an infernal-looking drum while all-female vocal trio Something Sleeps – dubbed “The Oosettes” for the night – take the lead with an acoustic guitar and violin, adding a whole new depth to the composition that somehow adds even more soulful quality to the song. They stick around to add keening strings and haunting backing vocals on May Queen and even some woodwind to the intro of The Forest Church.

It all builds a sense of ceremony and occasion that elevates the show to something truly special. By the time they get round to Let The Devil In and the abysal-yet-insidiously catchy One For Sorrow, Green Lung have never looked more like the band doom metal has been waiting decades for; brimming with ambition, panache and anthems for days. Doom hasn’t always translated well to bigger stages – just ask any of the riffers Ghost have brought out on their recent arena jaunts – but Green Lung might just be the band to change that. Someone get Papa on the phone.

Green Lung Setlist – Kentish Town Forum February 22 2025

1. Woodland Rites
2. Mountain Throne
3. Templar Dawn
4. The Ancient Ways
5. Reaper’s Scythe
6. Oceans Of Time
7. Song Of The Stones
8. May Queen
9. The Forest Church
10. Hunters In The Sky
11. Maxine (Witch Queen)
12. Graveyard Sun
13. The Harrowing
14. Old Gods
15. Let The Devil In
16. One For Sorrow

Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn’t fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token.