On The Sound Of Silence Attracting A New Audience

On "a night off", Disturbed guitarist Dan Donegan tries to make sense of The Sound Of Silence effect. Since the band performed their version of the classic Simon & Garfunkel song on Conan, the endorsements have flooded in. "It's reached all the way to the point of Paul Simon himself sending a message back, emailing David [Draiman, vocals] actually, the other day, saying that he loves the version and [it] got his blessing," Donegan marvels. "And he actually reposted it on his social media page telling people to check it out! And then to the point of even Russell Crowe commenting on his Twitter page." Donegan reckons Crowe's post — "His comment was something like, 'Every now and then somebody comes along and does something genius like this,' and then he posted our video for The Sound Of Silence" — also extended the song's natural reach.

"This whole past week has our heads spinning just 'cause it's exciting to see that it's kind of reached three huge-name people that are probably typically not Disturbed fans before this."

Another legend, Heart's Ann Wilson, also gave Disturbed's The Sound Of Silence the double thumbs up, Donegan points out. "Somebody had asked her a question in an interview, if she's heard anything that has inspired her lately, and she said our version of The Sound Of Silence. So this whole past week has our heads spinning just 'cause it's exciting to see that it's kind of reached three huge-name people that are probably typically not Disturbed fans before this."

The Sound Of Silence is the third single to be lifted from Disturbed's sixth studio album, which landed almost exactly five years after its predecessor, post-hiatus. When Disturbed were writing and recording Immortalized, Donegan reveals, "We didn't even tell a lot of our family." So were confidentiality agreements involved? "Only the [people] that needed to know knew," Donegan confirms, "and we made them sign confidentiality agreements... I didn't even tell my own father, um, there was my brother, sister — none of them knew. So we were trying to do our best to trick them.

"For a very long time we kind of had to - I don't wanna say lie to our friends, but we withheld the truth," he laughs. At times, Donegan noticed his nearest and dearest "were getting suspicious". "And I felt guilty of not telling them," the guitarist admits. Withholding this information on a night out after "a couple drinks" required even more willpower, but Donegan stresses, "We didn't wanna ruin it. We thought it would have a way bigger impact if we just kept it a secret."

Disturbed flew in and out of Vegas to record Immortalized and Donegan says the band used social media "as a tool" to help guard their secret. The guitarist would try to make sure he was home weekends: "I would check in and I would post stuff, 'I'm with my kids here at the park in Illinois,' you know, and, 'Mike's with his kids in Wisconsin,' and so when people were getting suspicious they would go on our Facebook page and... someone would say, 'I think they're recording,' and then somebody else would respond and say, 'Well I just [saw] Dan was at the park with his kids at home, how could he be recording?' So we would kind of use it as a tool to trick them and luckily it worked [laughs]."