April 22, 2009
Kalamazoo
BY SIMON THALMANN
MLive

BATTLE CREEK -- As the frontman for a hard-rock band that's sold more than 10 million albums worldwide in the last decade, it may seem like Disturbed vocalist David Draiman would have little to complain about.

But Draiman -- who along with guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist John Moyer is headlining the Music as a Weapon IV tour, coming to Battle Creek's Kellogg Arena April 30 -- is still a human being, and with that mortality comes the struggles that all mortals face, rock star or no rock star.

``It's been a little bit of a rough going for me, these past few months,'' Draiman said by phone recently from a tour stop in Atlanta. ``I had my fiancee leave me; I had to put my dog to sleep on a day off in Denver on this run, who's been with me on many, many tours. ... Just all kinds of heartache.''

In addition to losing his fiancee and his dog, Draiman's mother recently had a ``small heart attack,'' and he himself is just getting over being sick.

``Try singing with strep throat, my friend, not an easy thing,'' Draiman said.

Draiman and his bandmates conceived the Music as a Weapon Tour in 2001 as a way to, as Draiman said, ``try and unite the collective powers of some of the best bands within the genre of hard rock and heavy metal, to try and even the playing field a little bit between our genre and the rest of the genres that seem to dominate the scene.''

Their band has headlined the tour in each of its three previous incarnations, and this year, for the first time, the tour has expanded to include a lifestyle festival, with tattoo artists, an extreme sports complex, a technology and gaming zone and a vendor village. The festival will open at 2 p.m. and the concert -- with Disturbed and Killswitch Engage performing on the main stage and Lacuna Coil, Chimaira and other acts to be announced performing on a second stage -- will begin at 7 p.m.

Draiman said the band had no idea in the beginning that the event would get so big.

Also new to this year's tour -- and also complicated by Draiman's recent illness -- is Disturbed's Music as a Weapon IV Bootleg Series, in which each show on the band's 38-city trek will be recorded and available for download on the band's Web site.

After a five-day hiatus when the Weapon tour wraps up in May, Disturbed will set off for a two-week stint playing shows in Canada, and after another five-day break they'll tour for three more weeks in Europe. Then, Draiman said, the band will begin writing songs for a new record.