“Down With the Sickness” by Disturbed

"Down with the Sickness" is the song most people know Disturbed by, recorded in 1999 and sent out in 2000 on Giant Records, the second single pulled from their debut album The Sickness. Dan Donegan, David Draiman, Fuzz and Mike Wengren wrote it together, produced it with Johnny K, and handed it to Andy Wallace and Steve Sisco to mix.

It's nu metal at its most brutally efficient. Donegan's guitar, laced with electronics, locks into a riff that stomps and lurches at once, Fuzz and Wengren nail it down like a pile driver, and Draiman barks and snarls over the top, but the moment everyone remembers is Draiman's rapid-fire, staccato grunt, which Annie Zaleski of Spin called the throat-clearing that went around the world when she ranked the song sixth among nu metal's all-time best in 2017. In 2013 Loudwire's staff counted its main riff in their top 10 metal riffs of the 2000s.

It was the band's first single to go platinum in the US, and it kept on selling until the RIAA certified it 8 times platinum on January 17, 2025. On stage it's a fixture, and it usually closes the show.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.