Hi all and welcome to another Simpsons on Sundays post. Since last week we had another death and joining the parade of dead people is Paul Reubens. obviously, he was best known as Pee-wee Herman and infamously, for his little incident in an adult movie theater, playing with himself while watching a movie. His pee-wee Herman character was mentioned and had appeared in the Simpsons a couple of times during the series and some other things related to the show. https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Pee-Wee_Herman
I don’t have much more to comment on, except that the obvious connection to The Simpsons is through the late Phil Hartman. RIP. https://loudwire.com/rockers-pay-tribute-death-pee-wee-herman-paul-reubens/?fbclid=IwAR31NtXQzUld3OEpKgqs8HvgSB2glYNWcPWkVCHBxbZ0OFk9wm936RolqLs_aem_ARKiJudWdmVFHREK3xZ89bHeTgmid6qGkZ4Q4ojuJbNnkqzBiY4-2gcuzVKweDa_h1s
On the birthday front, James Hetfield of Metallica turned 60 years old on Thursday and by September next year, all 4 current members of the band will have reached their 60s. We know how they had guest starred on The Simpsons in 2006 and they are also on tour right now so, happy b-day papa Het. More on Metallica later on!
In other news, for those of us who like the band Tool and who may have come across my post I had done on the band from August 2019, guitarist Adam Jones and his wife welcomed a baby girl into the world. https://loudwire.com/tool-adam-jones-welcome-baby-girl-wife-korin-faught/?fbclid=IwAR2SmHhlgjJ2yTi1oW2vPzTTldim1uCJyDLuKYKXBJJ1QSLX2UKOBQI-5X8_aem_Af_3rwCZsfiaFcSxlVPTwfn3uUhVzNjanbKWbYyW_P4pXzepNEbieugMRJXLCO6oItY
This week it’s another Simpsons Sabbatical post and once again, on a band who will probably never be heard or seen in an episode of The Simpsons. They are one of the biggest bands out there now and are from Chicago. Their singer is named David and one of their more recent hits is a cover of The Sound Of Silence. Yes, I am talking about Disturbed and they have been releasing albums since Season 11, but had formed in 1996, during either Season’s 7 or 8.
Disturbed’s current lineup is guitarist Dan Donegan, singer David Draiman, bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren. The original lineup consisted of Dan, Dave, Mike and bassist Steve Kmak. They had formed in 1996 under the name Brawl. They were originally going to name the band Crawl, but as with Sevendust, another band had the name first. Then when David auditioned, he decided to see if they had any originals as well as covers. They did and obviously, Dave has been singing and making noises with the band ever since.
March 7th 2000 saw the release of the debut album The Sickness and in Simpsons terms, it had come out between the episodes Pygmoelian and Bart to the Future. There were 4 singles released off of the album and 2 of them have become rock radio hits. This was the first one to start it all. https://youtu.be/GVcY–XzeIc
The other big song off of this album would turn out to be their best known track of all, because of an animalistic noise made by David. You know this song. Right? By the way, contrary to Wikipedia the noise was not inspired by a trip to a zoo. https://youtu.be/22yh698nf8o
Let’s hear David now discuss how he had come up with the noise. https://youtu.be/PQS2WWTEefY
Without further ado, let’s hear the song itself. https://youtu.be/09LTT0xwdfw
The band toured and toured and during a radio interview in September 2000 in Toronto, David’s percussive vocal style had come up, which could be mistaken for wrapping. David was interviewed by the late Dave Bookman on 102.1 The Edge and Dave had pointed out David’s wrapping and the response was (rather nicely) “oh, no no no no my friend it’ss not wrapping” and said that it is his singing style. You really can’t blame anyone for misconstruing it though, because of the song Pour Some Sugar On Me bye Def Leppard which incorporates much the same singing style. Although in the case of Disturbed, they were unfortunately lumped in with the Nü Metal that was popular at the time. As they have evolved they managed to get away from as much of it as they could, without straying too far from their original sound. In fact, they stay with the original sound but have added things along the way, which I will get into while talking about future albums.
During the touring cycle for The Sickness, Disturbed were on Ozzfest in 2000 and 2001, as well as starting their own tour called Music as a Weapon. Kinda similar to Treehouse of Horror, the tour is also numbered in Roman numerals and there have been five incarnations of the tour, from 2001 to 2011, with Australian tours of their own in 2008 and 2011.
Believe came out on September 17th 2002, nearly 2 months before Season 14. It continues much of what The Sickness had to offer but there is more of an emphasis on melody this time. David’s voice does go soft but it is only during certain points of certain songs in which this occurs. In particular the songs: Awaken, Mistress, Remember, Breathe and the dark acoustic track Darkness. Really… you had to figure that they would go in this direction to expand the sound for their own purposes and not for celling more albums. Even so, Believe debuted at number 1 and the band went on tour to support it. This was the first single off of the album and if you remember, the music video was banned, because of the images of burning buildings. Don’t forget, this was nearly a year after the September 11th attacks and I honestly believe that people were waiting to see what bands would come up with, in response. Anyway, here is the song in question. https://youtu.be/DWSlOCEzRGo
One of the other singles off of the Believe album is Remember and it has a hint of what is to come, particularly with the guitar and the switch in time signature, during the verses. https://youtu.be/OaptZgTDWEg
During the tour, they did Ozzfest in 2003 and Music as a Weapon II, with a live album in March 2004. Also, Steve would be let go, dew to personality differences. Early on when they were traveling in a van to go from gig to gig, it would be Steve and Mike who decided to drop deuces in the van, while Dave and Dan did not. It resulted in their transportation smelling like ass every so often and having to dispose of shit every fucking day, from what I gather. I know, that’s gross and I apologize for that, but I had to tell you some time. Anyway, in 2004 Disturbed would hold auditions for whom would be the new bassist and John Moyer was one of the many who would try out. His band The Union Underground had become inactive in 2002 and so, John was available. The guys knew him, but he auditioned anyway and he of course, got the job and is still playing deep rumbling base with Disturbed to this day.
Ten Thousand Fists came on September 20th 2005, between Season 17’s The Girl Who Slept too Little and Milhouse of Sand and Fog. The album was a sort of return to the sound on The Sickness but with most of the melody of Believe intact. This time, the band tuned the guitars down a half step and added guitar solo’s. If you are a musician and you are reading this and you are a fan of the band, you know that they wrote the first two albums in e flat and or dropped d flat tuning. They continued this on Ten Thousand Fists but also added droped c tuning to the mix, to make the sound heavier. When I met Pete Loeffler from Chevelle in 2002, I asked him about tuning the guitars down for their latest album at the time, which was called Wonder What’s Next. He told me it was to make the sound heavier. This was compared to the d standard tuning on their previous album Point #1. It makes sense to me now that I think about it because the lower tuning does give the music more of a menacing tone, when needed. Is it any wonder why most extream metal bands have done this in the past few years? Also, why do you think Korn use 7 stringed guitars tuned down as low as a 1 being the lowest note and Fear Factory using low tuned guitars throughout their career? Anyway, I digress.
A number of singles were released off of this album, such as the first official single for Radio and is a prime example of both aspects I have talked about, setting this album apart from the first two. https://youtu.be/I77mjesUbkw
Another big single is their cover of an 80s era genesis classic and you know what? I like it as well as the original. https://youtu.be/YV4oYkIeGJc
The final single is the title track and it also opens the album. https://youtu.be/OuK4OcMUGcg
Disturbed would be on Ozzfest again in 2006 and this was mostly without Ozzy. Bands who were also on that year’s tour included Avenged Sevenfold, System Of A Down and many others.
The band toured throughout 2005 and 2006, including Ozzfest and after finishing, they went into righting and recording mode, for the next album. Indestructible continues where Fists left off, sort of and it came out on June 3rd 2008. However it is more of a return to the earlier sound on The Sickness, married with elements from the last 2 albums. I like the whole thing, but a number of songs stand out to me after years of it being out there. The first single came in March 2008 and I especially love the guitar solo, with the ascending line at the end of it. https://youtu.be/rxujAPhxlo0
The other song I had heard a lot on the radio is the title track and because they were on tour with Slipknot at the time as a part of the Mayhem Festival, I was concerned that the beginning of this song and Slipknot’s Pulse of the Maggots both have that army siren that it could be an issue. Thankfully, it wasn’t and to show you what I mean, here are both songs. Let’s hear some Slipknot. https://youtu.be/3TokaT9MPLM
Now, here is the Disturbed track with that same siren, but without any speech. https://youtu.be/aWxBrI0g1kE
Touring for about a year, they had worked hard and there would be one more album, before going on a hiatus. Asylum is unfortunately, my least favourite album because of its decidedly dark tone. I actually expected something similar to Indestructible! What I did notice with it and Believe is the lack of keyboards and samples on both albums. I had read that it would have a similarity to Believe but I actually expected more of the melodic aspects of that album in this one. However, having heard interviews with David talking about what he had gone through during that time made me reconsider my feelings on how it sounds musically, sonically, melodically and lyrically.
One thing David has also had to deal with throughout his career as a singer is acid reflux, which obviously can affect his singing voice if he hadn’t had surgery to correct the problem. Apparently, it is now under control, where as before stomach acid would come up and burn his vocal cords, which is obviously not good for anyone, let alone a vocalist.
Asylum has had some fan favourites including the first single Another Way To Die, which is about climate change. https://youtu.be/HwELajFteTo
In 2011, the guys decided to take a deserved hiatus from the band and in the process, all of the band members became fathers. Some were married with kids before then, but David actually got married during the break and has a son, born in 2013. He also started a project called Device, who had put out an album on April 9th 2013 and it sounds much like Disturbed, but with an industrial bent. It came out between Dark Knight Court and What Animated Women Want. It had a bunch of guests including Lizzy Hale, Serj Tankian, M. Shadows, Tom Morello, geezer Butler and Glenn Hughes. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t Disturbed! The other members weren’t sitting around, with John joining Adrenaline Mob in 2012 and Mike and Dan starting their own group called Fight or Flight in 2013. However, this would not spell the end of Disturbed. Even so, John would form yet another group called Art of Anarchy in 2014 and I believe that both of his groups are still active, alongside his membership in Disturbed.
David also produced the album Vengeance Falls by metalcore band Trivium and it wasn’t bad. I had posted on David’s Twitter about how I liked it and he had favourited my tweet, as Twitter posts were known at the time.
Before I forget, there was a compilation in 2011 called The Lost Children, consisting of B-sides and unreleased tracks. It had come out on November 8th 2011 between Replaceable You and The Food Wife. This was the single and it was a B-side from 2005. https://youtu.be/jvAmUKgH7HI
In 2015, Disturbed were back with a new album and a new producer, after working with Johnny K for their first 3 albums and the last 2 being produced by the band. This time they worked with Canadian producer Kevin Churcko who has worked with such artists and bands as diverse as: Five Finger Death Punch, Ozzy Osbourne, Shania twain, The Corrs, Britney Spears, Hinder and Michael Bolton to name a few. Kevin brings his own signature sound, which is most noticeable in the drums. If you listen to any of the albums by the artists I mentioned, you will hear what I’m talking about. Pay particular attention to the pitch of the snare drums. Oh yes, Kevin was also a protégé of Def Leppard producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. It explains a lot as to why his albums sound the way they do. Doesn’t it? I mean, I could easily get confused with an album produced by Kevin and Dark Horse by Nickelback because of the drum sound and another hallmark, such as the producer singing backing vocals and co-writing songs.
The new album in 2015 was called Immortalized and it is even heavier than Fists, with the guitars tuned down even lower. This is a prime example as it is also the first single off of it. https://youtu.be/8nW-IPrzM1g
The big song off of it is their cover of the Simon & Garfunkel classic The Sound of Silence, which was released as a single and video in December 2015. I had hoped to hear it in a Simpsons episode, but so far no luck. So, I will put it here anyway. https://youtu.be/u9Dg-g7t2l4
One more song which is of note is The Light, which is the first Disturbed song in a major key. Rather than give you the studio version, here is a live video from Youtube, where David humbly asks for audience participation. When fans hear the chorus hit and David sings the title of the song, all cell phones must light up, but only when he sings those two words. https://youtu.be/-N2Ri6Jz7fM
On July 20th 2017, the music world lost Chester Bennington to suicide, aged 41 and David wrote a heartfelt tribute to his friend, on Disturbed’s Facebook page. I have copied it for myself, but I won’t paste it here as a part of the blog post. However, I will tell you that he had told some great stories about being on tour, with both LINKIN PARK and Papa Roach and him being the grumpy old man trying to get some sleep, while Chester and Jacoby Shaddix were competing to see who could get rowdier on a chartered jet. Also, David tells a story about how Chester loved his vocal work on Sound Of Silence and told him that he should do more of that. Well, more on that below and I have read that tribute to Chester from David a few times.
October 19th 2018 saw the release of the next studio album Evolution and it would also be produced by Kevin Churko. I had mentioned it coming out the same day as the soundtrack to the Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody and because I like Queen, Disturbed and The Simpsons, I couldn’t resist talking about both albums in the post entitled Bobo??? the post talking about my favourite aspects of the classic episode Rosebud. Anyway, the guitars were tuned down even lower for one of the heavier songs, but the album also consisted mostly of ballads. The first single was more typical Disturbed and here it is. https://youtu.be/55NJzOSuKuY
Another popular song off of the album is A Reason To Fight and it was the second single, as well as being one of the ballads. Sure, there were thoughts of Chester in there, but also of Chris Cornell and Scott Weiland,, who had delt with addiction throughout his career. Here is the song as it was released on the album. https://youtu.be/t4382UVl0oc
When they play A Reason To Fight live, David gives a speech about how he and the rest of Disturbed had delt with either addiction or depression, or both. Also, how they know people who had also dealt with it in the music business and who had unfortunately passed away because of both demons, like Chester, Chris and Scott. David also reveals that he almost joined them in 2023. https://youtu.be/eeIy_utxOzg
The band toured until late 2019 and were going to do a 20th anniversary tour for The Sickness, but the coronavirus had other plans for us and so, they couldn’t go on tour and they and we… had to stay home. In September 2020, Disturbed released a new single and a cover of a track by Simpsons guest star Sting and it was from 1993. Again, both the original and the Disturbed versions are equally good. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Evolution had come out 2 days before Treehouse of Horror XXIX. Anyway, let’s here Disturbed covering Sting. https://youtu.be/KY8E-O7LCog
In 2021, David did a guest vocal with Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss and it was released as a standalone single at the time. https://youtu.be/kXylY7ACINI
I should also catch up on music I had almost forgotten about, where David sings on a track written by Korn’s Jonathan Davis for the movie soundtrack Queen Of The Damned. It certainly gave us a hint as to what else David had to offer on Believe and future Disturbed albums. Right? https://youtu.be/7YZHY1ekgYo
In July 2022, Disturbed roared back with a single which would be from a new album in November. I remember hearing it for the first time on Youtube and it was exactly when Hey You was being premiered to the world. https://youtu.be/YCGIj7KmwyI
On November 18th 2022, Divisive would be released, between Season 34 episodes From Beer To Paternity and Step Brother From the Same Planet. It was produced by a gentleman named Drew Fulk and I didn’t know the name until Disturbed worked with him. I try and make it a habit of learning who produced what and with more recent bands, it’s hard to tell without reading up on albums on Wikipedia. Anyway, this was a return to form, back to the meat and potatoes version of Disturbed and it is quite good. They even do a track with Ann Wilson of Heart and it is supposed to be a future single and the only ballad on this album. https://youtu.be/s4JudskwgAc
There is a song called Won’t Back Down, but it is not a cover of a Tom Petty song. I wish it was though, as it would’ve been interesting to see how they would tackle this track and it does have a little rhythmic vocal melody to it. However, it wouldn’t fit musically. https://youtu.be/ddnjfTqsT7o
In February 2023, David almost took his own life, because of a divorce from his wife of 10 years and thankfully, he is still here and rocking at age 50 like me. David was born March 13th 1973 and I am a couple months and change younger than him. I had put the speech about his almost joining Chester, Chris and Scott wher I did because he has said this in his speech on quite a few occasions this year, after playing A Reason To Fight. Anyway, Disturbed are on tour and let’s see how long they will go, before writing and recording a new album, while taking time off for their families.
Will we ever hear Disturbed on The Simpsons? Probably not, but I can dream and wish for that. Besides, the connection to the show is through their friendship with Metallica, who are obviously an influence and James is one of David’s favourite singers. Altho, if they did guest star on an episode, it would have to be without Krusty, because David is terrified of clowns. I get it, but I don’t think that clowns are in anyway scary and certainly Krusty isn’t, but he sounds like he smokes way too much. The one character who would probably try to get in good with David is Professor Frink and his weird noises he makes. I mean, could you imagine David going “Glaven” or another of Frink’s random sounds? Back to Krusty, both he and David are jewish and that could be the one thing that could bring David and Krusty together. Krusty was disowned by his father when he decided to go for a life as an entertainer and David was also shunned by his grandfather, when he had made the decision to go for the life as a rock star. Here is both parts of the Disturbed Wikipedia Fact or Fiction and some of which has been heard before. Also, it is as recent as 2015. https://youtu.be/w40DhmnD3A4
Now, the second part on David and it starts from whense he had talked about his Grandfather, distancing himself from his Grandson to 2015. https://youtu.be/9IdV7GdLrsk
Back to Metallica for a moment, in that David had wished James Hetfield a happy 60th birthday on Thursday on Twitter. He would go on to name his 3 favourite Metalica songs and one was played on The Simpsons in 2006. The songs are: Fade to Black, Creeping Death and Master of Puppets. They had played Faid To Black live during the Believe tour and it was partially played, to lead into Darkness.
While I compose these posts, I wonder what fans of the respective bands think of me talking about them, in context to The Simpsons and I hope that there are fans of all of the bands I have done posts on so far (including Disturbed) who feel the same way about the band and the TV show, as I do. According to a post on NoHomers a few years ago, Disturbed, Slipknot and Rammstein, were among the bands fans would love to take a trip to the shit hole, which is Springfield. Besides, it would show that bands like that are not afraid to allow themselves to be made fun of. After all, The Simpsons is a situation comedy and why not have David and other singers in heavier bands, show the lighter side to what they do? I mean, in Disturbed’s case they have a song called Fire It Up which is all about getting a hit from a bong, or smoking weed and Otto would be right at home with this tune. https://youtu.be/Jct3HKRYU2A
I would be happy if David or the entire band would guest star, for no other reason than to make the point that metal isn’t all just about the darkness and evil. Bands can be funny too, so why the fuck not? Not every band will make the trip to Springfield, but some can and probably should, in mine and other Simpsons fan’ss eyes. A few years ago, I had found a post on a Simpsons fan site mentioning Disturbed, Slipknot and Rammstein as guest stars who would be great in Springfield for an episode. It would be interesting if all 3 could do it, to get The Simpsons away from hip hop. That’s the other reason I am doing these posts because I want rock and metal to make more appearances in Springfield, regardless of Disney and their misgivings they may have. I say, enough hip-hop and let’s get back to guest stars who play real instruments and play live, without backing tracks. After all, members of the Beatles, The Who and the Rolling Stones were some who had made the trip so, why not rock and metal bands besides Metallica and Judas Priest?
Finally, I wonder what the members of Disturbed would think of some blogger somewhere in the world, putting them in the same context as a cartoon. Also, this blogger is also a fan and is blind. Would they be flattered? Would they take a brief look at my post and move on to something else, if (for some reason) a member does a random search on Google to check up on things in general? I hope that they like what I am doing, because I am and I always have been respectful to bands that I like. I hope that any Simpsons fan reading this (who also happens to be a fan of Disturbed) points either David, Dan, John or Mike to this blog post and if they see it, I hope they don’t mind. I’m just a fan who wants everyone to get along, especially when it comes to entertainment. I think of the musicians who play heavy music as people like us and they are only doing what they do, to entertain us. The same goes for all actors including our 6 voice actors on The Simpsons and the supporting caste. I’m not going to even try to talk about the current Hollywood actors and writers strikes, because that is over my head and I am not educated enough about unions and I have no wish to be. Anyway, that is just about it for this week’s post. I will leave you with the usual links to Disturbed music and information, for those of us who may be newbies. Those who aren’t, help out those who are and direct them to what they would probably like with a friendly playlist at first. Then, hit them with the individual albums and non-album tracks. Disturbed are melodic and as a musician, I can relate to what they do as I am a singer and rhythm guitarist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disturbed_(band)
One more thing I almost forgot to put in here ,is this excellent duet with David and Breaking Benjamin doing a classic from Queen & David Bowie, as a fan of all of the artists, I like this and as a Queen and Disturbed fan, this makes me very happy to hear this. https://youtu.be/UYYaIOvwAoY
Finally to end this post for real, I love this as it made me laugh so hard and the same with David and probably the rest of Disturbed. Besides, this reminds me of when rock radio stations would insert fake commercials into blocks of music and I wish that would return. https://youtu.be/66gSvNeqevg
Simpsons on Sundays 
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