Disturbed
The Sickness Tour
2025
"Disturbed turned the heat up high for the back half of the night, with raging pyrotechnics igniting on the first song and burning virtually nonstop across the stage until the end of the night."
Consequence of Sound
For the 25th anniversary Sickness tour, Disturbed’s production design embraced a raw, industrial aesthetic that paid tribute to the band’s origins while amplifying their evolution. The set featured towering steel boxes in distressed aluminum finishes that evoked the grit of their debut album. Vertical and horizontal strips of LED sat within the steel structure, displaying glitch-heavy visuals tied to the Sickness era. The entire set was lined in custom flame bars allowing the structure to burn for entire songs towards the end of the show.
The band requested a theatrical arc to the set. They played the entirety of the Sickness album in order and brought back the electric chair and Hannibal Lector gag from their beginnings. In between acts, archival footage was projected on an Austrian curtain to connect fans with the past, present and future of the band.
Lighting was intense and deliberate—an arsenal of strobes, movers and blinders matched the sharp edges of the music. The entire air space above the structure was free of lighting trusses to add to the monolithic feel of the stage design. Altogether, the production design served as both a visual retrospective and a visceral statement—dark, immersive, and unapologetically Disturbed.
Team
How we got there
Trevor and Sooner worked closely with the band to create a monolithic set design that could transform throughout the night of the theatrically driven production. The band wanted to celebrate their history in two acts. Act I featured the album The Sickness in its entirety starting with a Hannibal Lector-esk entry by the band's front man David Draiman and a theatrical electrocution at the close. An intermission was sandwiched between the acts with multiple archival movies displayed on the large, Austrian curtain. Act II featured the bands more recent hits and included a larger than life inflatable of the band's mascot "The Guy."
During Act II, the entire set transformed to a more intimate feel as the band made their way to the end of the thrust to perform their version of "Sound of Silence." The Austrian curtain lowered and a medieval hallway was projected on the front. Two local string players joined the band as guitar player Dan Donnegan performed the song from a fiery piano. The team wanted to ensure this particular moment in the show was art directed in a completely different fashion.
The set was composed of a massive monolithic aluminum structure that lit on fire via custom flame bars during the majority of Act II. The team elected to use LED video strips in horizontal and vertical orientations to help light the set from the interior as well as provide an interesting canvas for textural content. Behind the set, Trevor and Sooner added a wall of moving lights for programmer Jason Giaffo to play with.
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"...with raging pyrotechnics igniting on the first song and burning virtually nonstop across the stage until the end of the night."
Consequence of Sound
“The production value of the show was top-notch, with impressive lighting and visuals that enhanced the overall experience.”
Metal Planet Music
