PostCrescent.com recently conducted an interview with DISTURBED frontman David Draiman. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the lyrical inspiration for 2008's self-produced "Indestructible" and its projected follow-up effort:

"I wish that my life experiences didn't dictate continuing to delve into such darkness. Success, unfortunately, does not always equate to the best of luck and happiness. I've had a very rocky road prior to writing this record, and I've had a very rocky road this year as well."

List of recent challenges: His relationship with his fiancée, of German and Persian descent, caused a riff with his Jewish Orthodox family, who didn't approve of their impending marriage. She left him late last year; His mother had a minor heart attack last month, and his father is still recovering from major reconstructive back surgery that required a cadaver bone in his spine; At the beginning of the current Music as a Weapon IV tour in March, Draiman lost his dog, an Akita — "my longtime companion and the love of my life" — to an aggressive form of bone cancer.

"There have been friends who have betrayed me, who owe me hundreds of thousands of dollars. There have been business deals that have gone bad. I've taken my hits from this economy as well.

On why so many listeners have connected to DISTURBED's music:

"All of our music, everything that we gear our career and energy toward, is freeing you from your day-to-day burdens in life, casting away your pain, casting away you're your anguish, your agony, using the music as a cathartic element that helps free you of the things in life which weigh you down and makes you feel more powerful."

On the chance to perform for the troops in Camp Buehring in Kuwait early last year for Operation MySpace:

"To go ahead and play to 10,000 fully armed troops with fully automatic weapons in a mosh pit was something very, very unique that I don't think I'll ever get to see again in my lifetime. If I do, I will bless the day that it comes."