DISTURBED's DAN DONEGAN: We Wanted To Come Back When We Had Something To Say Creatively

Meltdown of Detroit, Michigan's WRIF 101.1 FM radio station recently conducted an interview with DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

Speaking about DISTURBED's decision to come back with a new album, "Immortalized", four years after the band announced its hiatus, Donegan said: "DISTURBED is obviously… That's our baby; it's everything we built, it's everything the fans built with us. That's our life.

"Nobody was ever quitting DISTURBED, nobody was leaving the band. We just felt it was time to give it a break. 'Let's catch our breath for a minute.' It was becoming too much of, maybe, a predictable machine or a routine. And we thought, hopefully, if we walk away for a minute while we're at the peak of our career, I know it might be a gutsy move, but we felt like it was the right move. We felt like the fans will, hopefully, miss it, and we will miss them, that's for sure. And when we regroup, when that day comes, it'll hopefully light a new fire and excitement under us of really missing what we have and what we built over the years."

He continued: "It was great to go out… [Singer] David [Draiman went out and did] DEVICE and me and [drummer] Mike [Wengren] went and did FIGHT OR FLIGHT. It was good to get our feet wet again of just being back in the clubs and having that hunger and being on stage. That was awesome. For a short run at it, it was fun to get out and do that. But, ultimately, looking at the big picture, we were always anticipating the right time of when we were ready to bring DISTURBED back. And, really, what it was was just making sure that the four of us were ready at the same time to commit to this, to be able to go out and do this properly, and do it when it felt like there is something to say here. We're not gonna do it because we need to do it, 'cause we don't need to do it. I wanna do it 'cause we wanna do it. And that was what we said when we started the hiatus; we said, 'Okay, look, we all agree that when we return, it's gonna be when we all just feel that we want it so bad that we feel that we have something to say creatively and we're ready to give it back to the fans."

Donegan added: "We're very lucky we've had this long of a career. We appreciate everything… the loyalty the fans have given us. And we owe it to them. So we felt like it would be a nice way to return and to surprise them."

DISTURBED will play its first show in four years on August 21 at the House of Blues in the band's hometown of Chicago. General ticket sales begin on Friday, July 24 at 10:00 a.m. CT.

The show will take place on the same day that "Immortalized" is released. The album is the band's first all-new studio effort since 2010's "Asylum" and ends a four-year hiatus that began after DISTURBED completed the touring cycle for "Asylum" in 2011.

DISTURBED has yet to announce its full tour plans behind the new disc.

The first single from "Immortalized", "The Vengeful One" is currently No. 7 on the rock radio chart.

Interview (audio):