It seems there's a very love them or hate them sort of attitude usually given towards this band, with half of the crowd loving their sound and what they do, and the other half dismissing it as part of the wave of nu-metal that swept the world in the late 90s which is universally hated by all of the "cool" kids in the metal scene.

Indestructible kicks off with a bang, literally, with the age old cliched pre-roll of sirens and explosions, but I can forgive that once the music starts.  A very well recorded album, the production is very clean and sounds pretty huge.  The guitars crunch and the drums pound and David Draiman's voice is as big and powerful sounding as ever.  One of the aspects in the love/hate debate usually, Draiman uses his staccato vocal lines mixed in with more traditional vocal lines really well which adds another percussive sound to the instrumentation.

A dark affair, Indestructible deals with issues like suicide and addiction, Draiman himself seemingly pouring a lot of his own life experiences into this album and it comes across as a very personal piece.

Standout tracks on the album are the opener "Indestructible" and "Into The Fire" which was released early with a very cool and dark video that had an intro by Draiman.  In an almost public service announcement moment he warned that the video dealt with the theme of suicide and urged viewers to make use of the US national suicide prevention hotline.  What a nice bloke.

"Deciever" and "The Night" lead into the only track that I find sort of trips the album up, "Perfect Insanity".  The band apparently wrote this song early on before The Sickness was released.  Despite the fact that it has been re-recorded for Indestructible and I'm sure tweaked a bit, it sounds like a song written early in a career, before much musical experimentation or adventuring in song writing had taken place.  While it is a great track, to my ears it lacks something that the rest of the album has in terms of song writing and impact.

"Haunted" provides us with a return to awesome town with some great change ups that shows that even in a world of straight forward driving songs and riff progressions, the band can prog it up when they want to.  The following tracks "Enough", "The Curse", "Torn", "Criminal" "Divide" and the closer "Facade" run the gamut of sucide (and possibly assisted suicide), depression, domestic violence and apparent hopelessness.  Musically these themes are well matched with some great aggressive playing. Not to a point of being completely oppressive though, the band also fills in the gaps with some great melody that hints at a light at the end of the tunnel.

There isn't a lot of light and shade on Indestructible though, which might throw a few of people off of the album.  It starts off hard and heavy and maintains that throughout the duration.  There are a few slowed down and melodic moments, but nothing that I'd really constitute "a breather".  If you like to put an album on and just be hammered with riffs for the whole listen (which I do on occasion) this album is for you.  If you like to be taken on an emotional journey through valleys and mountain tops, perhaps try something else.  Indestructible grabs you by the neck and shakes your head screaming about some pretty violent and dark things for 12 tracks.  Then it shoots your cat.  Awesome.

The album does drive along at a good pace though and is packed with huge amounts of balls with guitarist Dan Donegan bringing huge riffs and great melodies to the table and Mike Wengren on drums playing all over his kit staying away from anything too straight forward. With the clarity of the production on the album the drumming really adds a lot of groove.

All in all Indestructible is a great addition to the Disturbed catalogue and pushes their sound further and bigger than their previous albums.  With a debut at #1 on the ARIA charts (and in many other countries), Disturbed certainly don't appear to be losing any steam and the amount of anger and aggression they put forth on Indestructible makes me think they have a lot left in the burner.  When they can shed the nu-metal stigma that a lot of people still attach to them, I think punters will start seeing the band as what they are, which is a great, high energy rock/metal band who have found their "thing" and do it incredibly well.