Album Review: Disturbed – Evolution (Reprise Records)

Evolution is Disturbed ‘s 7th studio album and first since 2015’s Immortalized. This album comes after the band took a 3-year hiatus. It’s a fitting title as this is a band who has certainly evolved over the years, particularly when you think back to their nu-metal debut, The Sickness.

Always capable of delivering anthemic tunes, Evolution certainly doesn’t change that with the opener Are You Ready having just enough rhythmic hardness to step out of the electronica intro’s shadow. It’s such a Disturbed song as is the following No More with its thumping drum beat.

All very Disturbed, all very safe and all completely unexciting.

The success of their Simon and Garfunkel cover, The Sound of Silence has clearly had some influence on what comes next. A Reason to Fight is a ballad, one built on acoustic melody and David Draiman’s wonderful vocal performance. He absolutely soars here even if it’s about as interesting as watching paint dry. Although it certainly shows off the evolution of Disturbed.

The effects heavy In Another Time is a catchy tune, Stronger on Your Own is par for the course as Disturbed fire off another future radio single before Hold On to Memories steps back into clean singing, melody-driven softer stuff to varying degrees of success. It’s sweet sounding but fairly bland, the kind of track your grandmother would like because she heard The Sound of Silence cover.

Evolution continues the formula of these softer, melodic track interspersed amongst more familiar Disturbed tracks. The anthems they’ve become so well know for and here they hardly seem to be testing themselves. It seems as after six previous albums Disturbed can write singles in their sleep! Even the heaviest track on the album, The Best One Lies has ‘radio play’ written all over it.

The highlight of the evolved Disturbed is Watch You Burn thanks to it’s great inclusion of a string element but finale, Already Gone is pretty strong too. Even though it is a real bummer of tune to end on. Morose melody and pained vocals end things on a real downer.

Disturbed are defiantly evolving. On this album they’re not quite there yet mixing both classic Disturbed tunes with influences that are clearly directing their future. It is an album of two parts, one fan-service, one with an eye on what happens next. The end result is OK, that’s about as best as it gets.

Disturbed – Evolution Full Track Listing:

1. Are You Ready?
2. No More
3. A Reason to Fight
4. In Another Time
5. Stronger on Your Own
6. Hold On to Memories
7. Saviour of Nothing
8. Watch You Burn
9. The Best One Lies
10. Already Gone

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Evolution is out now and can be bought/streamed via all major services.