Disturbed released the single “The Sound of Silence” on December 7, 2015. Their version of the Simon & Garfunkel song had already appeared on Immortalized that August, but its arrangement took a different route from the band’s usual approach: piano, orchestral backing and David Draiman’s voice, with distorted guitars deliberately left out.
The cover arrived as Disturbed were returning from hiatus. In June 2015, they revealed that they’d spent the previous year secretly writing and recording a new album, announcing Immortalized alongside “The Vengeful One.” “The Sound of Silence” occupied the 11th slot on the standard album, giving listeners a different view of the band within the same record.
Drummer Mike Wengren suggested the song. Draiman told NPR in 2017 that Wengren associated it with music his family played while doing chores at home. The choice of arrangement came from guitarist Dan Donegan, who wanted to give the singer room to sound vulnerable. Donegan told Kill Your Stereo in a 2015 interview that he considered big riffs and bombastic drums too predictable a response. He wanted the band to try something it hadn’t done before, and said it took convincing to get everyone comfortable with that direction. Finding the right key was central to making the idea work.
For Draiman, the approach connected with training that predated his rock career. He explained in the NPR interview that he’d studied to become a cantor, learning classical vocal technique as a child. Singing rock had required him to develop more grit and aggression, while this arrangement asked him to revisit another part of his voice. Hearing himself in that setting was emotional: he said he hadn’t used that part of his ability for many years.
The vocal session itself caught him off guard. Draiman told USA Today in August 2015 that he thought he was finished for the day and had been smoking marijuana when Churko played him the arrangement and asked him to sing. That left him reluctant to record. Looking back, he connected the vulnerability he felt at that moment with the feeling that came through in the track.
Churko helped shape the performance around that exposed voice. In a 2018 interview with Waves, he recalled playing piano with Draiman to establish the key. Keeping the vocal clear throughout its climb required detailed work in the mix. Churko adjusted the equalization across the performance, sometimes almost syllable by syllable, and used compression to support the quiet passages without letting the loudest notes overpower everything. “The goal is to get every word heard,” he explained. The movement from a low, restrained opening to a forceful finish required careful handling of both extremes.
The single’s reach extended into television when Disturbed performed it on Conan on March 28, 2016. Paul Simon’s official website shared the appearance that April, describing it as a “wonderful rendition.” The songwriter’s site linked directly to the performance, placing the band’s interpretation in front of his own audience.
That television appearance went on to earn Disturbed a Best Rock Performance nomination at the 2017 Grammy Awards. The nominated recording was “The Sound of Silence (Live on Conan).”
