Music | The Surge talks with Disturbed ahead of its sold-out House of Blues show

When Disturbed decided to disappear as a band, they really meant it, not only going on a hiatus in 2011 that allowed the band members to pursue outside projects and personal activities, but dropping out of sight once they had regrouped so people wouldn’t know they were actually back together and making a new album, “Immortalized,” in Las Vegas.

“It was very tricky,” guitarist Dan Donegan said, looking back at how Disturbed kept all but a few people in the dark about their return to action. “I mean, we definitely pulled off some ninja moves in order to keep it a secret. A challenging thing for all of us was not telling some of our family members. I didn’t tell my dad for a long time. I think I told my dad at the very end of it. My mom only knew because she was spending a little more time at my house with my wife, with the kids, helping out with the kids because I was gone for three months (for recording).”

The cloak and dagger worked. When Disturbed in June announced the August release date for “Immortalized,” it also sent the first single, “The Vengeful One,” to radio without advance notice.

This created the sudden burst of attention the band wanted to create with the secrecy.

“Immortalized” became the fifth straight Disturbed album to debut at No. 1 on “Billboard” magazine’s album chart, while the singles – “The Vengeful One,” “The Light” and “The Sound of Silence” — have gone number one at on “Billboard’s” Mainstream Rock singles chart.

Disturbed began its hiatus at what might have seemed like an odd time. The group had been on a roll, pretty much from the moment it released its debut album, “The Sickness,” in 2000. It sold more than four million copies, and the three albums that followed — 2002’s “Believe,” 2005’s “Ten Thousand Fists” and 2008’s “Indestructible” — each went platinum.

The 2010 album, “Asylum,” didn’t reach platinum, but that may have been a function of the industry-wide decline in album sales. Disturbed was still headlining arenas and playing prime slots at major festivals.

But a dozen-plus years of staying on a songwriting/recording/tour cycle without extended breaks had taken a toll on Donegan and his bandmates, singer David Draiman, Wengren and bassist John Moyer. They needed to do something other than Disturbed.

The timing was especially good when it came to the personal lives of the band members.

“At the time of the hiatus, David was just about to get married, and during the hiatus he had his first kid,” Donegan said. “I have two kids and Mike had his second kid. So we had a lot of things going on in our personal lives. So it was nice to go home and have some normalcy to it and just be a dad and be a husband and do a lot of things that we want to do.”

During the hiatus, Draiman formed an electronic-edged band, Device, which released a top 15 self-titled debut album, while Donegan and Wengren formed the band Fight Or Flight, “ which released the album “A Life By Design?” Moyer, meanwhile, worked with Adrenaline Mob and Art of Anarchy.

Donegan said there was never a question that Disturbed would return. The only question was when. That time arrived in early 2014, when the band started plotting next steps and Donegan and Draiman began exchanging initial song ideas.

Over the next number of months, the entire band convened for several writing sessions in which the initial song ideas from Donegan and Draiman were developed and refined until the band felt ready to go into the studio with producer Kevin Churko (known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne and Five Finger Death Punch, among others).

These face-to-face sessions produced what Donegan feels was the most collaborative Disturbed album yet in “Immortalized.”

The album, though, sounds very much like Disturbed, with forceful yet melodic hard rocking songs like “What Are You Waiting For,” “The Vengeful One” and the title track setting the tone for the album..

The biggest surprise on “Immortalized” is the brooding version of the Simon & Garfunkel hit, “The Sound of Silence,” which features Draiman stretching his vocal range to new lows and highs and the group avoiding big guitar riffs and big drums in favor of a string section.

One byproduct of keeping “Immortalized” secret was the band had to wait until the album was announced to start planning for tours to support the album. That’s why the band is only now hitting the road. But Disturbed is going big with its show, bringing pyro and a set list that has room for an occasional suprise.

“The set list isn’t always going to be predictable for us,” Donegan said. “We’re going to have the meat of the set that will remain the same, but we’ll dig into the archives, deep into the catalog, and pull out an occasional song to change things up so fans will get something they haven’t heard in a long time.”

This story was originally published March 22, 2016 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Music | The Surge talks with Disturbed ahead of its sold-out House of Blues show."