Album Review: Immortalized by Disturbed

The Chicago hard rockers back in a big way after four years. Disturbed aren’t so much returning from a four-year hiatus as they are crashing loudly back into the room with as much noise as possible. From start to finish, Immortalized showcases everything they’re good at, from rhythms that demand to be vigorously fist-pumped to, rich melodies and emotionally charged lyrics.

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Review Summary: Ooh-wah-ah-ah-ah?With Immortalized, Disturbed return from their self-imposed hiatus with a looser and more organic sound that probably constitutes their largest stylistic shift since 2002’s Believe. This in itself is fairly remarkable, for over the years the American outfit has earned the rather unsavory reputation of often favoring reliability over ambition. Immortalized was recorded in Las Vegas under the purview of Kevin Churko (Ozzy Osbourne, Five Finger Death Punch), and his hand in Disturbed’s reorientation is particularly evident early on in the form of straightforward rockers like "The Vengeful One" and "Open Your Eyes", which power along at a satisfying, bone-crunching pace.

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The sixth studio long player from the Windy City-based outfit, Immortalized finds Disturbed bolting down the house they finished building on 2010's Asylum, offering up a 13-track slab of vintage mid- to late-2000s heavy rock piled high with bottom-heavy riffs, piston-like percussion, and big modern rock radio-ready choruses filled with randomly generated declarations of defiance. To say that the old "if it's broke don't fix it" idiom looms large over the proceedings is a bit of an understatement, but Disturbed's particular brand of 21st century hard rock has brought in enough platinum over the years to warrant a bit of metathesiophobia, and their myriad post-hiatus projects ultimately failed to yield the same dividends. With that noted, the listener's likelihood of deriving any kind of enjoyment from the album is directly related to their amore for previous outings, and Immortalized has more than its share of vintage Disturbed goodies, like the soaring first single "The Vengeful One," the stadium-ready "Who Taught You How to Hate," and the nervy Muse-lite title track.

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Disturbed is one of the most popular and profitable metal bands of all time. Following their nu metal anthem “Down with the Sickness”, they released four studio albums in 10 years, and all of them debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. To put this into perspective, Metallica and Dave Matthews Band are the only other “rock” acts to have achieved such a feat.

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