Following the success of their previous album,
"Indestructible",
 and the hit making forerunner
"10,000 Fists", featuring "Stricken" outdoing "Down with the Sickness" from "The Sickness",
Asylum is the album all fans of the
Nu-Metal foursome have been waiting for. But will this album be good enough to have you committed? Dave Roberts Investigates.

On a normal
day, if someone told me to listen to a band that I hadn’t heard of I would
probably laugh it off and look around for some excuse not to listen to this
person’s new favourite artist – especially if that band has been played on the big
radio stations before. But one rainy night a few years ago, a friend of mine decided to
force this new band upon me whether I liked it or not – and upon popping 10,000
Fists into his car's CD player he allowed me to discover a band that has influenced
my music taste quite heavily over the past few years.

And that was where my re-kindling of Nu-Metal started. I say
re-kindling because after Linkin Park’s Meteora album there wasn’t too much of
it going around and the little that was wasn’t exactly up to scratch. The album
even made it’s way onto Guitar Hero 3, no doubt boosting the band’s popularity
– and purse – so that they could conduct some touring and work on new material.
So it’s no surprise that 10,000 Fists is considered the quintessential
Disturbed album. But what was missing form the previous two albums was a bit of
variance, and a touch of melody.

And that’s where Asylum comes in.

The intro track, "Remnants", is one of the best intro tracks I
have heard in recent years. And it immediately introduces that lacking
substance from the word go – a bit of synth and an acoustic guitar launches
into a Metallica-esk guitar solo which instantly transports you to the new zone
of the band. And my first thought? “Holy crap. They’ve gone melodic.” But I
didn’t have enough time to ponder on this before I was caught up with the
guitar solo and whisked away to the first actual song off the album – and the
title track – "Asylum". From the very first maniacal laugh – a typical disturbed
tactic, you can tell it’s Disturbed and the rhythm and overall feel of the
music hasn’t changed at all. But it’s the addition of small moments of melody
that makes this album completely different to the previous works.

However, the track that really hit me hard and made
Disturbed climb their way up my favourite bands list to the top ten, was the
way they have added almost progressive interludes into their songs this time
around. Sue me for being a prog-head if you will, but I love hearing technical
aptitude in songs and albums and Asylum is not short of it – with the most
shining example of this being "Another Way to Die" – an epic melodic intro
almost reminiscent of Slipknot’s "Dead Memories" greets us before launching into one of the – and I’m not
lying here – best breakdowns I have ever heard from any band. And yes, that
includes Dream Theater. Again it still sounds like Disturbed, but with
something completely new and different about them.

The album also has something that all Disturbed fans would
be very familiar with by now - a few select covers including one by a
band that is touring very soon - U2. Their cover of "Where the Streets
Have No Name" isn't exactly as 'epic' as what I expected but it is still
something completely different and shows the band's willingness to do
something a little outside of the box. It also includes a live version
of both "Down With the Sickness" and "Stricken" - both high quality and
polished.

Moving onto the more technical details of the album, the
mixing of the album is high end, polished and everything to be expected
from a Reprise/Warner album. It loses none of its raw intensity – or any
of the
band’s sound – a very difficult task to undertake, and sonically this
album is
a masterpiece of mix. That being said, it isn’t anything new – it is a
bog-standard metal style mix, but it does ooze metal even right down to
the
album art featuring their mascot, and the locked
gates creating an illusion of wonder which is a great way to draw in
passers
by.

My only real beef with the album is that now, the band seems
that they are heading in a more mainstream direction, and I would just hope
that they don’t turn their back on their roots and their original sound, so
that the fans don’t get jaded with the ‘new’ sound. By the same token however,
it is great to see a band progress and change it up a little from album to
album, so the boys gets kudos for that.

Overall however, Asylum  is an absolute work of art and is Disturbed’s best album to
date. It would not surprise me if this became their Black album their Joshua
Tree record or their Sgt. Pepper’s disc. Their mix of Nu-Metal and Melody has
worked an absolute treat, and sounds different enough to revitalize the band’s
image, but similar enough to let our ears know who it is that we are
listening to, and not segregate the fans. And for getting the mix 100% correct they deserve a big tick from
me.

So, if your friend, brother or sister, girlfriend or
boyfriend, or even a complete random you happen to be talking to suggests you
to go out and grab 10,000 Fists to introduce you to Disturbed, go out and grab
a copy of Asylum. And when they ask you why you didn’t buy the album they said,
tell them this:

The quintessential Disturbed just got better.

 Rating: 8.5/10