DAN DONEGAN: ‘We Have A Lot Of Stuff Recorded’ For Next DISTURBED Album

During an appearance on the latest episode of The Mistress Carrie Podcast, DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan and drummer Mike Wengren spoke about the musical inspiration for the band’s new single, “I Will Not Break”, which came out on February 21 via DISTURBED’s own label, Mother Culture Records. Dan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We were out in L.A. last fall and just started getting the ideas out. And we had an album’s worth of material already done. And me and Mike and Drew [Fulk, also known as WZRD BLD], our producer, were sitting in the room. And I like to keep going. Once the ball’s rolling, I don’t like to quit — I don’t like to stop, because I always feel like the excitement’s there. You’ve got something new so I keep writing. And David’s [Draiman, DISTURBED singer] trying to play catch-up, because he’s gotta write all these lyrics to these songs. So a lot of times he wants us to stop because ’cause we’re getting too far ahead of him. And one day I was in the studio, and I was already digging back into old demos that I had at home, old cassette tapes that we had in the ’90s, as we’re going through the vault of things… So I wanted to go back and just kind of get back in that headspace of… Some of those recordings were actually just hitting the ‘record’ button and putting a little cassette player in the back of the room, so it’s the worst quality ever. But I wanted to hear some of those improvised tapes and get in that headspace of where we were back then. And even though ‘I Will Not Break’ is a brand new riff, it kind of just had that vibe.”Donegan continued: “I was supposed to be tracking guitars in the studio for something else that day and I’m, like, ‘Ah, let’s just put that on the back burner. I just feel like doing something new.’ And we just start messing around a bit and I’m just playing around with this riff for a while. I changed the riff probably 50 times as we were sitting there, and I think when the riff finally came about, I think me, Mike and Drew just looked at each other and were, like, ‘That’s it. That’s the one. Go with that.'”Dan added: “Cakebread is one of the wines we have backstage here [on tour]. And we were having that in the studio that night. We opened up a bottle of wine and started improvising. So the working title for the song was called ‘Cakebread’.”Mike also reflected on the making of “I Will Not Break”, saying: “[Dan’s] riffing out, and we’ll loop some beats for him and he just sits there. And he can riff for hours sometimes. Sometimes something comes out in five minutes. Sometimes it comes out in five hours. It had been going around. I’m, like, ‘You know what?’ I’m sitting in the back of the room. I Doordash some wine. The best that the store had on Doordash was Cakebread. So the guy shows up. I crack open the wine. Within five minutes of pouring the glasses for everybody, that riff for ‘I Will Not Break’ came out.”Asked when DISTURBED fans can expect a full-length follow-up to 2022’s “Divisive” album, Dan said: “We really don’t know. Ten minutes before you walked in the room, we were just talking with our manager too. Our main focus has been this 25th-anniversary tour [of DISTURBED’s debut album, ‘The Sickness’]. We do have a lot of stuff recorded, obviously, with the first single out. There hasn’t really been much talk about the release yet, just because we’re so focused on these tours. It’s hard to think about it when we’re selling out the Garden and all these other places. We’re just riding this wave and we’re on a high right now that there hasn’t been any deep discussion just yet of if it’s coming out this year or next year. We’ve still gotta strategize that.”Donegan previously talked about “I Will Not Break” last month in an interview with Ryan McCredden of the I-Rock 93.5 radio station, DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan. He said at the time: “[That song] came late in the recording process. We were out in L.A. this past September, October and November, just getting the ball rolling. There was no really gameplan of a timeframe or deadline in any way. We had some time off the road with only a handful of shows last fall, so we said, ‘Let’s get back in the room and get things going again and see how the creative process goes.’ And everything was going great. We wrote a bunch of material, tracked it all, and then ‘I Will Not Break’ kind of came late in the session. I just felt like I still had a lot left in me. And I was supposed to be tracking guitars for something else that day, and I just told my producer I felt really creative. I wanted to kind of go with this kind of old-school — I wanted to give something to David that was gonna hopefully trigger kind of that old-school delivery out of David. So we just kind of worked on this heavy groove, this beat, and I just started improvising over it, and as soon as the riff came around, we kind of all just looked at each other, like, ‘That’s the one. That’s the one.’ And then I just continued down that road and put together a rough structure. David wasn’t there at the moment, at the time, so we just kind of worked out the music and put together a rough structure. And when I’d seen him next, I kind of went over it with him and he connected with it. And he kind of gave us those elements that we were looking for — the still melodic, but still quick, rapid-fire syncopation at times and just that kind of delivery we were hoping to pull out of him. And we thought it would be a great lead-off track to share with the fans.”When McCredden noted that “I Will Not Break” sounds like something DISTURBED could have recorded 25 years ago, possibly inspired by the fact that the band was preparing to embark on a 34-date North American tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of their 2000 debut album “The Sickness”, Donegan concurred. “I was going through the archives and going through a lot of stuff here, my memorabilia, gearing up for this 25th-anniversary tour, and I came across some old demo tapes,” he said. “I had actually cassette tapes, if people don’t remember what those are. Back in the day, in the late ’90s, when we got David in the band, we would just set up a little cassette player in the back of the room and hit ‘record’ and record us — crappy version, but record our practices so we could hear us just improvising ideas. And so I was kind of in that headspace ’cause I was listening to these old riffs and these old deliveries of us just kind of improvising, like I said, and it just had me in that headspace. Actually, one of the song ideas was a riff I pulled from 1998 off the demo and I kind of slid it back into the mix. I have a history of doing that. I have a way of sneaking in old ideas and seeing if it triggers anybody, if they remember it and pick up on it, if it’s been that long ago. But I try to get back into that headspace. And so, even though the riff for ‘I Will Not Break’ is brand new, I was kind of in the spirit of that old-school DISTURBED, and that’s what we were hoping to do — trigger [David] in that that kind of way.””I Will Not Break” marks DISTURBED’s first new music since its acclaimed 2022 album “Divisive”.According to DISTURBED, “I Will Not Break” is “a necessary song, about becoming stronger than the forces that constantly try to tear you down.” The track includes the stirring lyrics “I’ve had enough of feeling terrified, now I’m deciding that I won’t be hiding from anyone,” which encourages listeners to push back in the face of adversity.Fulk previously worked with DISTURBED on “Divisive”, which was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee.According to Billboard, “Divisive” sold 26,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release, with 22,000 units via album sales.On the all-format Billboard 200 chart, “Divisive” debuted at No. 13.DISTURBED has had five No. 1s on the all-genre chart, beginning with “Believe” in 2002.”The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour” kicked off in Nampa, Idaho on February 25. Produced by Live Nation, each night features two sets of music, opening with DISTURBED playing the five times platinum “The Sickness” in full, followed by a full set of greatest hits. The first half of the tour features support from special guests THREE DAYS GRACE, featuring the return of original singer Adam Gontier, and opener SEVENDUST, and the second half features special guests DAUGHTRY with opener NOTHING MORE.Since “The Sickness” was released in 2000, the album was certified five times platinum by the RIAA, spent a total of 106 weeks on the US Billboard 200 chart, and Revolver named it one of “Top 25 Debut Hard Rock Albums.” Billboard said of the title track upon release: “‘Down With The Sickness’ is, of course, the quintessential DISTURBED song, harnessing all the band’s seethe and its now-famous tribal beat and guitar chug into three and a half minutes of alt-metal mayhem. It’s menacing, it’s rhythmic, it’s rebellious.”Photo credit: Travis Shinn[embedded content][embedded content]