DISTURBED Singer Says Smoking Pot Has Helped Him Open The Doors Of Creativity To His Mind

DISTURBED frontman David Draiman has a message for anyone who has an issue with the fact that the band's new song, "Fire It Up", which opens with the sound of a bong hit, was inspired by the singer's pot-smoking routine: "Lighten up. Lighten the fuck up," he tells Artisan News (see video below). "It's, like, you know what? Not everything needs to be gloom and doom and serious and smacking you constantly. You've gotta have a little bit of yin and yang. I mean, for God's sake, BLACK SABBATH wrote 'Sweet Leaf'. All of a sudden, that's untouchable material? All of a sudden you're gonna have a political issue with it or some shit?"

He continued: "I'm not making a political statement. I'm talking about something that simply has been the catalyst for my creativity and for me being able to relax enough to let the doors open a little bit for the vast majority of my career. 95 percent of the song I've written — easily, easily — while under the influence, beyond any shadow of the doubt. And I'm not ashamed to say it or anything else. And I don't view it as demonically as some people do, and I'm not viewing it as demonically as some people do, and I'm not viewing it as a political statement. I may be for legalization in general, which I am, but that's not why we did the song. We did the song because Danny [Donegan, guitar] suggested it to me when I was searching for additional themes…"

Draiman added: "After a hundred songs in, and you're writing about subject matter that's all serious, you kind of start running into the same themes from time to time, and it gets a little monotonous. I go to the other guys to kind of feed me some ideas. 'What do you think I should write about?' And Danny suggested… 'You know what? Why the hell not? It's what's helped you open the doors of creativity to your mind for our entire career. Why not write a song about it? We did. Some people love it. Some people don't. Some people are gonna probably come around within a couple of weeks' time, once it kind of settles into them. I love it. I think it's great. I think it's definitely a little bit of a culture shock, not just from a thematic standpoint, but it starts out with my voice being in a very different spot than anybody's used to hearing me. So there's two different aspects: it's the stylistic difference, and it's the thematic difference that people are, like, 'Oh…' I'm, like, all I have to tell you is if that threw you for a loop, wait 'till you hear a couple of the other tracks on the record, because this is diverse, man."

He went on to say: "It's funny: people bitch if you stay relatively similar, and they bitch if you evolve and if you change. And you can't win. At the end of the day, you have to follow your gut.

"Like I've been saying since Day One: I can only hope that everybody is as happy with this body of work as we are. You can please some of the people some of the time; you can't please all the people all the time, and that's okay. Maybe this is part of growing pains, whatever the case may be. All I can ask for the DISTURBED fans to do is just relax. Give it a minute and let it sink in before you… If any of the more hardcore ones want to quickly dismiss it."

Asked what his favorite strain of marijuana is, Draiman said: "Oh, man. It's tough, because down in Austin [where I live], it's not legalized, so I've gotta hunt for whatever the hell I can get. But if I can find Kush of any kind anywhere I go, that's the preferable… I love it. If I go to Amsterdam, I'll hunt down the master Kush over at the greenhouse the minute I get there, I still love White Widow too, I still love Bubblegum, I still love a bunch of 'em, but there is no substitute for Kush. Kush is just, to me, the be-all, end-all. I'm much of an Indica guy than a Sativa guy anyway, so I like the more stony kind of thing, 'cause that's what puts me in the right zone for creativity anyway. I'm not looking to wake up from it."

"Fire It Up" is taken from DISTURBED's sixth studio album, "Immortalized", which was released on August 21 through Reprise Records.

The band played its first show in four years on Friday night in its hometown of Chicago.

The group will hit the road next spring in support of "Immortalized". The trek kicks off on March 11 in Vancouver, Canada, wrapping up on April 10 in Memphis.