DISTURBED TRIVIA
Trivia
Disturbed first played in Japan at Summer Sonic 2002. According to the festival's official history page, the 2002 edition ran on 17 and 18 August across two sites: Chiba Marine Stadium and Makuhari Messe for Tokyo, and the WTC Open Air Stadium, Intex Osaka and Zepp Osaka for Osaka. Disturbed are listed on the Outdoor Stage on the second Tokyo day, 18 August, on a bill that also included The Offspring, NOFX, No Doubt and The Wildhearts. The Osaka Outdoor Stage on 17 August carried the same acts, but Disturbed's name is not among them. Tower Records' magazine bounce, reviewing Believe in its October 2002 issue, called that Summer Sonic the band's first visit to Japan.
Disturbed played the first day of Knotfest Japan 2016, on 5 November 2016, in Halls 9 to 11 of the Makuhari Messe exhibition centre. The festival was Slipknot's own, and Slipknot closed both days. Warner Music Japan announced the show as the band's first visit to Japan in thirteen years. The promoter's timetable gave Disturbed the 17:30 to 18:10 slot, followed by SiM, Deftones and Slipknot. According to Gekirock's live report, the set opened with "Ten Thousand Fists", "The Sound of Silence" was played by a line-up of piano, upright bass, acoustic guitar and timpani, and the band closed with "Indestructible", "Voices" and "Down with the Sickness".
David Draiman found the band that became Disturbed through an ad for a singer in the Chicago music paper Illinois Entertainer. Guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist Steve "Fuzz" Kmak had placed it, and by Draiman's account it talked up studio time and a record deal in progress, so the band looked much nearer to signing than it really was. Draiman, then a student at Loyola University Chicago, remembers sitting through thirty, forty, perhaps fifty auditions, all with bands that wanted someone to sing covers when what he wanted was original material. At this one, in August 1996 at the band's rehearsal space on Chicago's South Side, he was asked which covers he knew and asked them instead to play something of their own; within a couple of minutes he had a melody over it. That first meeting produced "Want", later on The Sickness. In the band's 2001 biography Donegan remembers him as the first singer who suggested improvising.
Before Disturbed there was Brawl: guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist Steve "Fuzz" Kmak, with Erich Awalt singing. Donegan and Kmak went back further still - as a teenager Donegan had founded Vandal, an '80s-style glam metal band with Kmak in the line-up. When David Draiman answered Brawl's ad for a new singer, he brought a new name with him, as the band's 2001 biography puts it: Disturbed. Draiman has explained that the word matched what they felt at the time - the conformity people were forced into was itself disturbing to them, and they wanted to go past the limits.
The Guy started as David Draiman's own grimace. As he told Gekirock in August 2010, the young band wanted a symbol that could stand for them like a logo, and he worked on one with a friend who was then a graphic designer. Draiman suggested a grimacing face; when the idea did not come across, he pulled the face himself, and the friend turned it into a face on screen and ran distortion over it. After two or three passes Draiman told him to stop, and The Guy was done. The name came from drummer Mike Wengren's nephew, a two-year-old who was frightened of the face and kept calling it "the guy" to his parents, and it stuck. On the debut, The Sickness, The Guy is not on the front cover but drawn in white lines on the CD itself. Dan Donegan recalls that fans took to it at once: some had it tattooed while Disturbed were still a local, unsigned band.
The video for Disturbed's cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" is animated and built around the band's mascot, The Guy. Todd McFarlane, who directed it, says the band arrived with a clear idea of what they wanted, and he worked again with his comic-book comrade Greg Capullo to carry one continuous story through all three minutes. The villain was a twisted version of the man from the Monopoly board game, chosen because everyone recognises him, while The Guy, in black clothes with a shadowed face, already looked like a superhero; McFarlane credits Iron Maiden with having set that template for everybody. Speaking in 2006, David Draiman described the clip as carrying over elements of the original video in a far less tongue-in-cheek, more biting way.
Disturbed's take on "The Sound of Silence" began with a suggestion from Mike Wengren. The band like to record at least one cover per album, David Draiman explains, and this time he wanted to reach back to the '60s and '70s; Wengren named Simon & Garfunkel, a duo Draiman's parents and an uncle had played him as a boy. Draiman assumed they would toughen it up as they had "Land of Confusion", but Dan Donegan argued for something ethereal and ambient. What got it moving was Kevin Churko's opening piano line: the producer played it to Draiman after he had finished for the day and sent him back into the booth for three hours, the longest vocal session of his career and the only one the whole band watched from the control room. Churko took three days to comp the takes, and Draiman listened to the result three times before saying a word, close to tears. He later credited Churko with the octave drop and the low, whispered delivery too.
David Draiman first sang "The Sound of Silence" live on the 28 March 2016 episode of Conan. Right after the broadcast, he says, Paul Simon himself got in touch, full of praise, and shared the performance on his own social media; the two kept in contact, and when they met on Maui, Draiman received the songwriter's blessing in person. The Conan clip went on to pass 100 million YouTube views in November 2019, the first clip from the show to do so. Draiman has said he never imagined the song would travel as far as it did, into figure-skating routines and Dancing with the Stars, and it was also used in The Blacklist and in the game Rock Band 4.
Believe came out in Japan through Warner Music Japan on 9 October 2002 (WPCR-11327). After the album's twelve songs, the Japanese CD adds a thirteenth track: a live recording of "Shout 2000", a song from the debut album The Sickness. On 29 January 2003 the label followed it with a Japanese DVD-Audio edition of Believe (WPAR-10035), carrying the album in 5.1 surround sound and in stereo. Its track list stops at the twelve album songs, without the live "Shout 2000".
In February 2003 Disturbed toured Japan as headliners. According to the promoter Creativeman's tour page, there were three dates: Shinsaibashi Club Quattro in Osaka on the 5th, Nagoya Club Quattro on the 7th and Akasaka BLITZ in Tokyo on the 8th, with Taproot as guests in Nagoya and Tokyo. Ahead of the visit, on 22 January, Warner Music Japan released "Remember", the second single from Believe, in Japan as a souvenir of the tour (WPCR-11399). It added three live recordings not on the album: tracks two to four, "Remember", "Rise" and "Bound", were taken from a concert at the Astoria in London in September 2002.
Indestructible was released in Japan by Warner Music Japan on 4 June 2008 (WPCR-12886). The Japanese CD has thirteen tracks, the last of them, "Parasite", being the bonus track of the Japanese edition. On the label's product page the producer credit goes to Disturbed themselves.
The Japanese edition of Asylum was released by Warner Music Japan on 1 September 2010 (WPCR-13915). It adds "Leave It Alone" as a bonus track found only on the Japanese edition, and the label's track list also names a hidden track, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". On the 15th of the same month Warner Music Direct sold a premium limited edition of its own: the CD and DVD limited edition (D9362-49625) with a folded poster, the album artwork on one side and the sheet music of "The Animal" and "The Infection" on the other. Its CD adds live versions of "Down with the Sickness" and "Stricken", and its DVD holds "Decade of Disturbed", a documentary of about sixty minutes on the band's first ten years, plus lesson videos in which guitarist Dan Donegan and bassist John Moyer show how to play the songs.
Immortalized, the album that ended the hiatus, was released worldwide on the same day, and the Japanese edition came out through Warner Music Japan on 21 August 2015 (WPCR-16753). The Japanese CD runs to sixteen tracks: after track 13, "Who Taught You How to Hate", come three bonus tracks, "Tyrant", "Legion of Monsters" and "The Brave and the Bold".
Evolution was released in Japan by Warner Music Japan on 12 December 2018 (WPCR-18152). The Japanese CD has fourteen tracks: after track 10, "Already Gone", it adds a live recording of the Simon & Garfunkel cover "The Sound of Silence" featuring Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge, "This Venom", a Sam de Jong remix of "Are You Ready" and "Uninvited Guest". Copies of the Japanese edition alone came with an original sticker.
The Japanese edition of the debut album The Sickness came out on 21 June 2000 on the Giant label, catalogue number BVCG-21016. The American CD has twelve tracks; the Japanese one has thirteen, with "God of the Mind" added as track 13, after "Meaning of Life".
David Draiman has spoken warmly about Japan to the Japanese press more than once. Interviewed by Gekirock in August 2010, he said he loved everything about the country, its food and culture in particular, and that he wanted to come over soon. In August 2015, after the band's hiatus, the same site asked about touring for the new album, and he said flatly that they would definitely go to Japan. In his message to Japanese fans he named Japan as his best touring memory, recalling a sightseeing trip to Kyoto by Shinkansen and how overwhelmed he was by its culture and history. The band came to Japan in November 2016 to play Knotfest Japan 2016.
The Sickness entered the Billboard 200 in May 2000 and did not reach its peak, No. 29, until that October; it then stayed on the chart for 107 weeks. When Immortalized gave the band its fifth No. 1 in 2015, Billboard noted that the debut was the only one of their six studio albums so far to have missed the top spot. In the RIAA's records, though, it is their most certified album: 5x Platinum since 21 June 2018, ahead of Ten Thousand Fists at 3x Platinum and Believe, Indestructible and Immortalized at 2x. Its single "Down with the Sickness" peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in 2001, yet on 17 January 2025 the RIAA certified it 8x Platinum - on the same day that "Stupify" went 2x Platinum and "The Game" and "Voices" went Gold.
Disturbed recorded "Glass Shatters", the entrance theme of the wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, for WWF Forceable Entry, a compilation on which the loud rock bands of the day played the themes of the federation's superstars. Released by SmackDown! Records and Columbia Records on 26 March 2002, it carried the band's recording as track four, and according to WWE the album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 3 and topped the Hard Rock Albums chart. When the band announced the 25th anniversary edition of The Sickness in March 2025, it included a new mix of the song with an intro by Austin himself, which made "Glass Shatters" available on streaming services for the first time.
Disturbed found their bassist John Moyer through an open call. A notice on the band's website in spring 2004 announced two open auditions for a new bass player: at a rehearsal studio in Los Angeles on 27 March and at a club in suburban Chicago Heights on 4 April. Applicants had to know "The Game", "Believe" and "Liberate" and bring an 8x10 photo, a demo CD and no gear but a bass. Moyer, whose band The Union Underground had played Ozzfest 2001 with Disturbed, chose Chicago to give himself more time with the songs. In his telling he joined a line of several hundred bass players; he had the members' numbers but hid his face when their manager walked the line, wanting no special treatment. He played his assigned song, "The Game", packed up and left, was asked back for the next day, changed his flight, and began that jam with "Prayer". The band confirmed him at the end of April 2004.
Johnny K produced Disturbed's first three albums, The Sickness, Believe and Ten Thousand Fists. For the fourth, Indestructible, David Draiman, Dan Donegan and Mike Wengren chose to produce the record themselves; according to the band's 2008 biography they tracked it over three months in the autumn of 2007 at Groovemaster Recording in Chicago. Draiman said the three albums with Johnny K had taught them a tremendous amount, Wengren saw the project as a chance to prove to themselves and everyone else that they could do it, and Donegan wanted to bring back the rhythmic, rapid-fire delivery heard less from Draiman on the two previous records. Asylum was made the same way: the band entered Groovemaster Studios in February 2010 to produce it themselves.
David Draiman chose the title Asylum for its double meaning. The word first calls to mind a mental hospital or sanitarium, he explained in the band's 2010 biography, but it is also meant as a haven, a safe place, and that dual sense is what decided it for him. He added that the album's lyrics were far more direct, and much less cryptic, than on earlier records.
Asylum's "The Animal" is, quite literally, a werewolf song. In the band's 2010 biography David Draiman said he wrote it about an actual werewolf, inspired by films such as Underworld and Wolfman: a creature that relishes its power and lives for the transformation. The video stars Lena Yada, a Japanese-American model and actress and a former WWE Diva. Director Charlie Terrell built it on the tale of Yuki-onna, the snow woman, from the 1964 anthology film Kwaidan: Yada, her face painted white with a blood-red cross, plays a mysterious presence in a blue-tinged forest who commands a pack of white wolves. Terrell called it a Japanese ghost story mixed with the ordinary fear of the woods. The single reached No. 2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in January 2011, and the RIAA certified it Gold on 6 March 2025.
By the RIAA's count, Disturbed's highest-certified title is not one of their own songs but their 2015 cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence": the RIAA certified the single 9x Platinum on 9 May 2025, one step above "Down with the Sickness" at 8x. On the Billboard Hot 100 it climbed to No. 42 in April 2016, the band's best placing on that chart, and only the second cover of the song ever to make the Hot 100; the first, by Peaches & Herb in 1971, had stalled at No. 100. It held No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart for seven weeks, and in May 2024 its video passed one billion YouTube views, the first Disturbed video to get there. That same year the Australian DJ Cyril reworked the band's recording into a dance track that reached No. 34 on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart.
The Recording Academy lists three Grammy nominations for Disturbed and no wins. The first came at the 51st Grammys in 2009, when "Inside the Fire" was up for Best Hard Rock Performance against Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe and Rob Zombie, among others; The Mars Volta took the award with "Wax Simulacra". At the 59th ceremony in 2017 the Best Rock Performance nominee was not the studio recording of "The Sound of Silence" but the band's live performance of it on Conan, and David Bowie's "Blackstar" won. "Bad Man" brought a Best Metal Performance nomination at the 66th Grammys in 2024, in a field with Ghost, Slipknot and Spiritbox; Metallica's "72 Seasons" won.
In 2023 Dan Donegan posted the post-it notes he had kept from Disturbed's 1996 search for a singer. Circled among the contacts was Joel Hoekstra, a musician from his neighbourhood who had sung briefly in another local project; it was his guitar playing that floored Donegan, and Hoekstra went on to play for Night Ranger and Whitesnake. Donegan is not sure he ever told him he was on the list. He had also left messages for David Draiman: the two talked on a Sunday night, got on at once, and Draiman came to rehearsal the next day, after which Donegan knew they had their singer. The band played its first show a little over three months later, on a bill with friends in a Black Sabbath tribute band, and signed a major-label deal three years after that. Hoekstra's reply was that it was just as well it never happened, since he might have ruined everything.
Disturbed took shape in August 1996, although Mike Wengren and Dan Donegan had been playing together in one line-up or another since 1992. As Wengren tells it, Chicago then had an alternative pop-rock scene — Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, Local H — that they were not part of; considered too heavy, they could not even get a gig at the Metro. So they built their own scene in the suburbs and South Side dive bars alongside friends' bands. Whatever a show paid went into recording three-song demo cassettes, which they copied in bulk and handed out after concerts in their genre, local or national, splitting up when several fell on one night. He calls the band of those years a "self-promotion machine". The breakthrough came when Lungbrush, who had a way in at the Metro, gave them an opening slot and their South Side following turned up in force. Giant Records signed them in 1999.
The Guy fronts the covers of Ten Thousand Fists (2005), Indestructible, Asylum, The Lost Children, Immortalized and Divisive. For Ten Thousand Fists the band turned to Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn: Blabbermouth reported in July 2005 that he would create the cover, noting that he had already designed the sleeve of Korn's Follow the Leader, and Loudwire credits the finished cover to McFarlane working with fellow comic artist Greg Capullo. David Finch drew Indestructible; Raymond Swanland illustrated Asylum and The Lost Children, then worked with Alex Tenta on Immortalized, and Tenta went on to handle Divisive. Of them all, David Draiman has named the howling, fist-clenched, fiery-eyed figure on Asylum as his favourite so far, more frightening and far more demonic than before.
The Sickness came out on Giant Records, a label Irving Azoff had started in late 1988 as a joint venture with Warner Music. In April 2001 Warner Music Group bought the half of Giant it did not already own; Giant closed its Los Angeles and Nashville offices and its roster was divided between Warner Bros. and Reprise. Billboard listed Disturbed among the acts moving to Reprise, alongside Steely Dan and Prime. The magazine observed that Giant went out on two high notes: Steely Dan's album-of-the-year Grammy for Two Against Nature, and the breakthrough of Disturbed, whose label debut had already been certified platinum.
Disturbed's first three albums, The Sickness through Ten Thousand Fists, were produced by Chicago's Johnny K. According to Music Connection, he had recorded and produced demos for the band while it was still unsigned, and the band liked them enough to insist that he make the debut as well. His base was Groovemaster Recording Studios, the Chicago studio he owned. Johnny K has said that one of the most important parts of recording is psychology, since some players respond to being pushed and others to encouragement, and that Mike Wengren played better when he was a little angry or frustrated.
David Draiman has said the hardest song on The Sickness to record the way the band wanted was "Down with the Sickness" itself. The sticking point was the short rapped passage in the middle: neither the label nor producer Johnny K understood it, and both wanted it taken out. Draiman held his ground, telling them they did not need to get it, since listeners would; it was simply raw emotion on display. Radio edits dropped the passage anyway, but the album kept it, and the album version is the one the band plays live every night. Nobody in the band expected such a dark, abrasive song to become a single, Draiman recalls; what carried it to radio, in his view, was the staccato vocal hook that went on to be heard around the world.
"Stupify", Disturbed's first single, was chosen because of the reaction it drew at shows, but it was no overnight hit. David Draiman recalls a hard fight at radio, where nothing quite like it was being played; staff at Giant Records, the label that had signed the band, treated breaking the song as a personal mission. It took about six months to climb into the top ten of the Modern Rock chart, where it peaked at No. 10. The first time Draiman heard it on the air he was stuck in traffic in downtown Chicago — and he got out of the car, stood on the hood and screamed at the top of his lungs.
Music as a Weapon is the touring package Disturbed launched in 2001 and headline themselves. Billboard announced the first edition in August 2001: a fall tour with Drowning Pool and Systematic, fellow Ozzfest 2001 acts, plus newcomers Adema and Stereomud, all four of which had released their debut albums that year. The second edition, in spring 2003 with Taproot, Chevelle and Unloco, ended at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom, a homecoming for Disturbed and Chevelle, and that final show became the live album Music as a Weapon II, shared among all four bands. Disturbed's part included the previously unreleased "Dehumanized" and an acoustic version of Metallica's "Fade to Black", and the album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 148 in March 2004. The third run, in late 2006, brought Stone Sour, Flyleaf and Nonpoint along.
"Stricken" is one of the first Disturbed songs with a guitar solo. Dan Donegan traces it to the way Ten Thousand Fists was written: the band went back to basics, jamming out riffs, which brought their old influences back to the surface and left some songs sounding as if they needed a solo. When Disturbed first formed, he says, almost every song had one, but as the writing developed he was drawn to Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden in particular had hardly any solos. Since the grunge years and the "alternative" wave, he observed, soloing had largely vanished from rock, and the band wanted to do their part in bringing it back.
Nathan Cox shot the video for "Stricken" in an abandoned Los Angeles hospital that had served as a location for A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. David Draiman says the performance scenes, filmed in a bright, loft-like room, were anything but creepy for an old abandoned hospital; the eerie part was Mike Wengren's solo sequence, shot in the boiler room used for the Freddy Krueger scenes. Wengren joked that he half expected Freddy to come out and give him a beating, but the villain was too scared to show himself — he might have the claws, the drummer pointed out, but Wengren had drumsticks. The video for the title track of Asylum was also filmed in an abandoned hospital, in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights, at the same location Metallica had used for "All Nightmare Long".
"Hell" was recorded at Groovemaster Studios in Chicago in early 2005 but left off the American edition of Ten Thousand Fists. It surfaced instead as a bonus track on the album's UK and tour editions and as a B-side of the "Stricken" single. Dan Donegan has explained that the band dropped it not because it was weak but because they thought it was strong: they wanted to save it for the right outlet at the right time, such as a soundtrack or a sporting event. The song never left their minds, and in 2011 it was released again as the first single from The Lost Children, the band's first collection of B-sides.
The title Indestructible came late. Dan Donegan has said the band usually go into a record with some idea of its name, but this time it changed during the sessions: while they were tracking the music for the title song, David Draiman reworked his vocal, and its lyric gave the album its name. Speaking to Gekirock in May 2008, Draiman said he had packed several meanings into the word: the record was made to give listeners courage and strength; of the bands of the so-called nu-metal era, Disturbed alone had survived and stood the test of time; and the bond with the fans was never going to break either. In the same interview he reflected that, stylistically, Disturbed never really belonged to that scene; they were closer to a classic metal band, he felt, and something of an outcast there.
Asylum opens with "Remnants", the band's first purely instrumental piece, which was written as one song with the title track. John Moyer credits the idea to Dan Donegan, who wanted the band to start somewhere different. To Disturbed the two are still a single song, and they play it that way live, but they found a point where it could be split for listeners who would rather skip the instrumental opening and go straight to the aggressive part. Joined, it would have run to about seven and a half minutes; dividing it also let the instrumental set the album's mood and made a radio edit possible. Near the end the album holds one more surprise: after the penultimate track, "Innocence", comes a hidden cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
In 2013 David Draiman produced Trivium's sixth album, Vengeance Falls. Matt Heafy dates the friendship to 2005, when Draiman came up to Trivium after their set in Chicago on a Danzig tour to say he was a fan. The bands later toured Australia together and then did the Mayhem tour; Heafy handed Draiman a copy of In Waves mid-tour, and by the end of it Draiman offered to help them make the jump he felt they were ready for. Hearing his work with Device sealed it. Heafy called him the most in-depth producer Trivium had worked with and said he had learned more about singing from him than from anyone, from technique to how to stand and look after himself.
After producing Indestructible and Asylum themselves, Disturbed handed Immortalized to producer Kevin Churko and recorded it at The Hideout, his private studio in Las Vegas. Dan Donegan said that after the long break — five years between albums — the band wanted a fresh production element that would push and challenge them. The first song written and recorded was the major-key ballad "The Light", which gave David Draiman pause: he heard the size of the hook but was unsure he could come to terms with its style, one reason he wanted to go to Chicago and put ideas to the others in person. Draiman says the band weighed in on each other's parts more than ever before, with everything under the microscope and every opinion voiced loudly, yet the sessions stayed cooperative throughout. Donegan later named "The Light" his favourite Disturbed song.
The title Immortalized was chosen only after the album was finished. As David Draiman told Gekirock in August 2015, the band looked over what they had made and the word simply spoke to them. The title song was written with sport and athletes in mind and is about great achievement; the idea at the word's core is to leave a name behind and be remembered for what one accomplished in life, and the song urges people to act in ways that will be remembered. Draiman added that music can bring a listener's past back vividly and make a moment last forever, and that this is exactly what Disturbed keep trying to do.
Dan Donegan records riffs on his phone the moment they come to him, and in 2024 he reckoned he had about a thousand stored there. He tries not to get too attached to them, he says, but files them away and goes back to them when writing runs dry, although a new record usually starts with fresh improvising. "Are You Ready", from Evolution, came out of his store of unfinished material: Donegan had written its music in 2004 but never finished it, and when he dug the demo out again, David Draiman took to it immediately and began scatting a melody over it. The single reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in only its sixth week, the fastest climb among the band's eight chart-toppers to that point.
Divisive was recorded in Nashville in 2022 with producer Drew Fulk, but its first single had been born a few months earlier. In the fall of 2021, on a day off from touring in Fort Myers, Florida, the band met up with their producer friend Dave Fortman. Dan Donegan asked for a good groove and room to improvise, and the riff came almost at once; he looped it, they locked in the drums, and David Draiman started scatting a melody. "Hey you" were the first two words out of his mouth, and to Donegan they already sounded like a big hook. Credited to all four members and finished with Fulk, "Hey You" became the band's 11th No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart in 2022.
"Don't Tell Me", from Divisive, is the first song on a Disturbed album with a guest: Heart's Ann Wilson duets with David Draiman. Mike Wengren says it was always meant to be the record's power ballad, and while they were tracking it Draiman suggested turning it into a duet. Asked whom he had in mind, he had no shortlist, only one name. Wilson had already praised the band's version of "The Sound of Silence", including on Twitter, which had started a friendship between the two singers. Dan Donegan recalls that Draiman's vocals were cut in Nashville, then the band flew to California, where Wilson sang against his tracks in a couple of hours while Draiman worked through the harmonies with her. When Disturbed first played it live, in January 2024, Moriah Formica of the opening act Plush took Wilson's part.
When "I Will Not Break" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart in April 2025, it was Disturbed's 13th chart-topper there, tying Godsmack and Van Halen for the sixth-most since the chart began in March 1981. The band's first appearance on that list was "Stupify", which peaked at No. 12 in 2000, and its first No. 1 came in 2006 with a cover, Genesis' "Land of Confusion". Of the 13, "Inside the Fire" ruled the longest, holding the top spot for 14 weeks in 2008. At the time Blabbermouth reported that the song had also set the record for the longest-running No. 1 in the history of Mediabase's Active Rock chart.
Disturbed songs have turned up in films and games since the band's first album. "Stupify" was used in the 2000 Adam Sandler comedy Little Nicky, and "Down with the Sickness" in The One (2001). A remix of "Liberate" appeared on the 2003 soundtrack album of The Matrix Reloaded, and the song was also in the game Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004). "Prayer" played in the 2005 horror film House of Wax, "Guarded" was on the soundtrack of Saw III (2006) and in the game MX vs. ATV Untamed (2007), and in 2007 the band introduced a new song, "This Moment", on the soundtrack to Transformers.