Disturbed’s Draiman reveals weed inspiration

Disturbed frontman David Draiman says he’s been inspired to write most of the songs in his career while on marijuana.

The singer and his band have returned after a four-year hiatus and will release their sixth album Immortalized on August 21 via Reprise Records.

They issued a lyric video for the title track last week – and Draiman says the song Fire It Up from the new record was written while high.

He tells Revolver: “There was a big fat bowl before that one. 95% of the songs I’ve written in my life, I’ve written them while high. That’s the god’s honest truth.

“I’ll have a very skeletal musical idea in my head, and then I’ll light one up, go in the shower and let the steam kind of build up. It helps me relax, and I can see the gaps. I can see the holes in the rhythm and the melody and I’ll know where I can go, and what the possibilities are. It helps me be able to perceive everything a little bit more clearly.”

He continues: “So I figured, ‘What the hell, let’s write a song about it!’ Danny Donegan had this riff that had a real funky bounce to it and that was so different. So it was, ‘Okay, let’s try this.’”

Immortalized is now available to pre-order from the band’s website.

Disturbed feature in the latest edition of Metal Hammer – out now in print, digital and via TeamRock+.

Disturbed: Inspired To Create