Tour Preview: Disturbed Promise New Songs on Intimate Tour Before "Mayhem"

David Draiman and the rest of his Disturbed bandmates are eager to play songs from their recently completed fourth album Indestructible to live audiences. Unfortunately, they can't, as contractual obligations are preventing the band from playing the majority of their new material live before the album's June 3rd release date. "Isn't that horrible, how things have become," Draiman tells Rock Daily from his home in Chicago, just hours before Disturbed piled into a tour bus for the long ride down to Little Rock, Arkansas, for the tour opening show. "It would really nice to see how a crowd reacts to the new songs early on, but there's too much dependency on that first week sales number and you can't sacrifice any of the impact of that." Fortunately for fans, the band does have a few surprises planned, including two already-released Indestructible songs they're allowed to play, "Perfect Insanity" and "Inside the Fire," a never-before-played-live b-side titled "Hell" and the live debut of the their contribution to the Transformers soundtrack "This Moment." Plus, the smaller venues and smaller markets the current tour touches upon invigorate the band. "It's going to be very intimate. We're going to try to make it special," Draiman says. "It also enables us to get back to grassroots. This is who we are. We started as a small club band. It's a different type of energy."

It won't be until the launch of the Rock Star Mayhem tour that Disturbed can finally unleash Indestructible in all its live glory. Draiman has long professed that the band's songs take on a second life in the live setting, and is looking forward to see the Indestructible material's metamorphosis. The traveling festival also features Slipknot, Mastodon, Machinehead and more. "It's a very, very talented bill, and being around that much talent makes you step up your game," Draiman says. "So I think everybody can expect the A-level performances from everybody. You're going to get performances from hell."

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Song Stories

“Time to Pretend”

MGMT | 2008

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”

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