DISTURBED Bassist: 'Our Goal Now Is To Lift Our Live Show To A Level That We've Never Done, An Unprecedented Level For Us'

DISTURBED bassist John Moyer spoke to Reno's Rock 104.5 radio station about what fans can expect from the only show the band has on its schedule so far for the rest of 2018, at the Austin City Limits music festival on October 13 in Austin, Texas. "It's not a DISTURBED show without pyrotechnics. So, of course, that's gonna be involved," he said.

"We did three shows this summer, and what we did was we basically took what was happening previously with our last tour and just kind of ran off of that. So it's gonna be a lot of what we did the last tour, but with some of the new material.

"I don't think our new stage show is gonna be in full effect until 2019, the beginning of 2019," he continued. "We're gonna need a few months to put it all together. Because of the scope of the new record, there's a lot of changes that we now have to do within how the show flows, how we wanna showcase it, how we wanna expand on 'The Sound Of Silence'," referring to DISTURBED's massive hit cover of SIMON & GARFUNKEL's "The Sound Of Silence". "So our goal now is to lift our live show to a level that we've never done — an unprecedented level for us."

Moyer added: "There's some bands out there that have done such amazing live shows — like a band like U2, where they go through changes, and the FOO FIGHTERS, where they really change up the way… Like, sometimes they're on stage, sometimes they're out front — they change locations where they play from. So these are things that we're gonna take into account on the new tour. But for the show coming up at [Austin City Limits], we don't have the longest slot in the world. It's a festival show, so it's not like we can do a two-hour headlining thing."

Asked if he and his bandmates had any trepidation about covering "The Sound Of Silence" on their last album, 2015's "Immortalized", Moyer said: "DISTURBED's had a lot of great success with covers. I don't know if you recall, the very first record, [2000's] 'The Sickness', we had our cover of [TEARS FOR FEARS'] 'Shout', which people loved. And then later on, when I joined the band, on [2005's] 'Ten Thousand Fists', we did a cover of [GENESIS's] 'Land Of Confusion', which was another very successful song for us. So we kind of had a method — we would take these songs that you would not consider to be rock songs or metal songs, and we would turn them into these DISTURBED-esque tunes, with the classic DISTURBED groove and with David [Draiman, vocals] doing his thing over it.

"The process on 'The Sound Of Silence' was completely the opposite," he explained. "Mike Wengren, the drummer, was the one who started the conversation about doing a SIMON & GARFUNKEL song. And as the band went through the catalog, 'The Sound Of Silence' kind of rose to the top. And, of course, the initial idea was to put it through the DISTURBED, 'Let's metal it up, let's rock it out,' and Dan [Donegan, guitar] said, 'No, let's not. Let's go in the opposite direction.' And it's kind of, like, 'It's already kind of an acoustic thing. What are we gonna do with it?' And it was uncharted territory for everybody, and everyone just jumped into it and developed it, and with the help of producer Kevin Churko, the band created something truly amazing with that song. And it's even more amazing to think that, arguably probably the biggest hit before that for the band was 'Down With The Sickness' — that's regarded as one of the biggest heavy metal songs of all time. And then you're talking about a band, six records later, putting out probably their biggest hit to date. That's a big feat for any band to do."

According to Moyer, fans can expect to hear DISTURBED once again pushing the boundaries on its next album, "Evolution". "DISTURBED's never been afraid to take chances, and that has done well for them over the years," he said. "Just when you think you've got them figured out, they change gears — they move in a different direction. And not everyone is always happy with change, but that change is what keeps this band going.

"For lack of a better word, evolution, which is the name of this next record that's coming out, is this continuing process for us," he said. "We're embracing this change that 'The Sound Of Silence' sort of gave to us, and we're moving forward with it. And you're gonna hear a lot of those textures on this new record."

"Evolution" will be released on October 19.

"Immortalized" ended a four-year hiatus for the quartet and was its fifth album to enter the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1.

Like "Immortalized", DISTURBED's new album was recorded at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, Nevada with Churko.

Photo by Travis Shinn