David Draiman is an established voice in hard rock and metal — he’s also “nervous as hell.” Known for fronting the platinum-selling , Draiman is hoping lightning strikes twice for his latest venture: .
Reverb spoke with the frontman about the debut album from Device (out April 9), his favorite addiction and why he’s nervous again for the first time in 16 years.
Take us back to the beginning with Device. When did you decide you wanted to do a side project?
It wasn’t until it actually fell upon me—it happened quite accidentally. It was never an intention as a part of the hiatus for me to actually do one. The reasons for us stepping away were to be human beings for a while and for us to get out of the assembly line type of nature of 12 years of: make a record, tour, make a record, tour. It breeds predictability. It breeds sterility.
The Device project really came together as a matter of serendipity, to be honest. I originally met Geno Lenardo from at a festival in Belgium while he was still in Filter back in the day. We’re both Chicago boys so I had seen him out on the scene. He reached out to me was working on a few tracks for the “Underworld” soundtrack and said he had a song in mind for me. He sent me the track and I obsessed over it for an entire night and called him the next day and said we need to go ahead and track it. I headed to Chicago, tracked it, mixed it, delivered it to Lakeshore, Lakeshore loved the track and wanted to use it as the lead track on the soundtrack. But there was a conflict because we had a track from Disturbed called “Hell” and we didn’t want the two tracks to be fighting each other. So we held on to the track we wrote for “Underworld”, which is called “Hunted”—and it just grew on us. It became very compelling. So we started talking. In March of 2012, Geno came to my home in Austin, Texas for the first of two two-week writing sessions that ended up giving birth to the Device record.
There are some obvious comparisons to Disturbed. In your words, what are the biggest differences both lyrically and sonically?
Let me go ahead and just say, to start off with, whether I like it or not—and I do like it—the voice is Disturbed. People are always going to identify my voice with Disturbed because that voice branded the sound. For instance, when Maynard James Keenon goes and does A Perfect Circle, it still sounds like Maynard James Keenon. If Corey Taylor goes and does Stone Sour, it still sounds like Corey Taylor. There’s no getting away from that. Itap a blessing as far as I’m concerned. There are definitely tracks on the record that have more of that feel and similarities, in particular, For example, if you look at tracks on the record like “Through It All” or “Haze” or even the chorus in “You Think You Know”; those are radically different than anything I’ve done in Disturbed and in fact really wouldn’t have been appropriate for a Disturbed record, stylistically. It was really nice to be able to go in some different directions.
Did you find yourself in a different headspace while you were writing and recording for Device?
I don’t know about a different headspace. There’s definitely enough vitriol and anger in this body of work as usual . I definitely did go into some different directions. For instance “Through It All” is a track I wrote for my wife Lena—itap a prettier tune. “Haze” is a celebration of my favorite addiction, which is playing live. It definitely takes on those different textures but it was approached relatively the same way.
I spoke with (Editor in Chief) over at , who told me Device was nominated for Best New Talent for the Golden Gods Awards before even putting out a record—because itap your band…
It was really, really weird to me. I am tremendously flattered and very grateful. I can only hope that now once people have had the opportunity to hear it that they feel itap justified.
Do you feel any pressure to live up the hype surrounding Device?
I am nervous as hell. I haven’t felt like this in 16 years—itap crushing. I won’t lie. Itap like being a new proud papa all over again. You can cut it with a knife, there’s no question .
Device has plans to add additional dates to their U.S. tour but no Colorado shows have been announced yet.
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Paige Montgomery is a Denver-based freelance writer. Check out more of her work on Ի.
