Dan Donegan of Disturbed was gracious enough to drop by to chat about the latest record from the band Divisive. Immediately I had to ask him about the guitar solo on the latest single “Bad Man” and he was stoked to tell me this.
‘That’s probably one of my favorites and I usually don’t pick favorites…that was a fun it just kind of came in the moment, I just kind of grabbed the whammy pedal and wanted to do something different with it and, you know, I had a little fun with it.’
I had to ask about the sound transitioning back to an old school type of a vibe and he said it came back naturally but more excited about it.
‘We don’t want to be predictable throughout our career, you know we’ve been around for a long time, I’ve known these guys since 1996…and we’ve written a lot of songs together. And you know when we took a little bit of a departure with some of the softer stuff, like Sound of Silence and the last album…half of it being acoustic…we just wanted to, for ourselves, push ourselves down a different road and show different flavors of the band, show David’s voice in a different light…and it was fun, it served it’s purpose, we enjoyed those albums. But after doing a good amount of material in those different flavors we wanted to come back…to the heavier sound some of those signature things of early Disturbed. The heavy guitars, syncopated drums and a more animalistic David…the signature things that put us on the map in the first place.’
He continues talking about how they as a band write music. With the pandemic it made being in the same room with the guys very tough, especially when everyone lives in different states. He said that they were able to get in the same room to write music together which he says is the best way for their band to work.
‘Getting back in the studio and just playing in front of each other and feeling that is kind of how this album went.’
Dan is a great chat and very open about how he creates music within the band and the collective convictions of the band is incredibly inspiring. He talks about the theme of division in the album Divisive is spread throughout.
‘(laughs) It’s just become such a divided country, divided world, but obviously here in the US….there’s maybe some negative subject matter but we try to the best of our ability shed light on it to try and show some positivity on it…and even for our first single ‘Hey You’ off this album, it’s just more of a wake up call for all of us to kind of step back and instead of finding the differences and things for everyone to bitch about and hate each other over, let’s try to find a common ground…so we can live in some for of unity….Music is one of those common ground things…you’re coming in the for the release, you’re in for the escape from the hell out there in the real world…it shows you that we can find something…we can unite, we can stand next to each other, whether you’re black, white yellow, it does not matter whether you’re Jewish or Muslim you can stand next to each other at a concert, singing those same songs, having your big therapy session…the power of music is just amazing to me…’
Check out our full conversation below, including a little Bears vs Packers ribbing!
