DAN DONEGAN Says DISTURBED Will Only Play Two Shows This Year: 'We're Still Trying To Get Together A Game Plan' For 2027

In a new Instagram Live, DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan spoke about the band's plans for the coming months. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "[We have a] couple of shows coming up, as you may know. Just two shows, that's all we're doing this whole year. Obviously, last year was the big 25th-anniversary tour [celebrating 25 years of DISTURBED's debut album, 2000's 'The Sickness']. And we were in Europe. We finished up in Europe last fall. So we've been off this whole time. Everybody's taking some down time, some family time, some personal things in our lives, and finding our own ways to stay busy. But [we're playing] two shows this year. That's it. We have July 17th coming up in Mansfield, Ohio at the Inkcarceration festival. We headline that Friday night. For those of you that are familiar with the movie 'Shawshank Redemption', it is held at that prison. So just outside the prison they've set up a few stages. Massive lineup all weekend long. We're just headlining Friday night. You got LIMP BIZKIT headlining one of the nights, and I think BAD OMENS the other one. But massive lineup with many great bands. And then a week later we come down to Hollywood, Florida to play the Hard Rock Casino down there. We haven't been there in probably 20-something years. So we decided to pick up a show down there and do a show on the 25th of July. So we got a lot of friends that are actually gonna do a couple road trips. They're gonna do the Ohio show and the Florida show. So if you guys are looking to check out either one of those, it's the only two we have this year."

He continued: "So nothing to announce for '27 just yet. We have our talks internally with management and amongst the band, but nothing that I could put out just yet. We're still trying to get together a game plan and see where everyone's heads are at, where we are with material, where we are with future touring. So just one step at a time. We're just gonna bang out these two shows.

"I definitely miss it," Dan added about performing live. "It's been long enough. I think Scotland was our last show we did in late October last year. So definitely going through withdrawals. So [I'm] looking forward to those two [shows]."

This past May, DISTURBED frontman David Draiman said that fans will be "pleasantly surprised" by the material he and his bandmates have written for DISTURBED's follow-up to 2022's "Divisive" album.

Back in April 2025, Dan told Rock 100.5 The KATT FM's Cameron Buchholtz that he and his DISTURBED bandmates had recorded "a bunch of material" in the fall of 2024, "enough for an album, and it's great and we love it and we're excited about it. But we thought at least with this [early 2025] tour [celebrating 25 years of 'The Sickness'] we'll put out 'I Will Not Break' as a [new standalone] single just to give fans something new along with this anniversary tour, but not quite announce a release date of the whole album. 'Cause we're still trying to strategize when we're gonna tour… We may drop another single at some point, and maybe we'll have a release date for the whole album by that point."

Regarding the fact that "I Will Not Break" marked DISTURBED's first release via the band's own label, Mother Culture Records, Dan said: "We've been with Warner Brothers our whole career, and this is, yeah, the first time us doing it on our own. We had a great relationship with them. They always worked hard for the band. [We're] very thankful for the relationship we had. And it probably helped that we were successful early on the first album, that they always stayed out of our way. So we were able to do what we wanted to do, and they'd say, 'Hey, it's working. We're not gonna interfere.' And that's always a great relationship when an artist could do what they want. So it was a great run with them, but we weren't obligated to stay. We have a great relationship with our management company, with Q Prime, and they have the infrastructure too. So they have their radio department and their marketing and their social media and everybody. And they've been amazing with us as well. And I think our relationship with radio and the fans over the years, just as the band, all the relationships we've built, we've had a lot of support. You guys, everybody have always been there for us. So if we keep delivering the songs and you guys keep playing it, it's a good partnership for us."

Dan spoke about the the musical inspiration for "I Will Not Break", which came out in February 2025, during an appearance on an episode of The Mistress Carrie Podcast. He said: "We were out in L.A. [in the] fall [of 2024] and just started getting the ideas out. And we had an album's worth of material already done. And me and [DISTURBED drummer] Mike [Wengren] 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 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'."

Donegan previously talked about "I Will Not Break" in a February 2025 interview with Ryan McCredden of the I-Rock 93.5 radio station. Dan 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 "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."

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.