David Draiman is down with The Darkness again. The Disturbed frontman and “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” singer Justin Hawkins publicly called a truce on Twitter on July 15 after a war of words began about 20 years ago.
It all stemmed from an incident in which The Darkness opened for Disturbed in 2002 during a gig at London’s Brixton Academy. According to Hawkins, it was “the worst experience I had [as] a support band for another big band,” as he stated when recounting the events in a recent episode of his “Justin Hawkins Rides Again” YouTube series in a post titled, “I Pissed Them Off Big Time.”
Though in the episode he said of Disturbed, “I think they’re just brilliant – if you like that sort of thing.” Apparently Hawkins took issue with something lewd that one of their fans did at the 2002 show and the fact that Disturbed never apologized for it.
He recalled, “One of their fans threw a piece of chewing gum that presumably had been in their mouth, and it actually landed in my mouth. … It was just a brilliant shot; I had to respect it, really. And then afterwards, David Draiman wasn’t very pleased with me. I don’t know, I think I may have issued an admonishment to the throng, which didn’t go down very well with him. But what are you gonna do? Who gives a fuck? I’m just kidding.”
Hawkins then added, “When things like that happen … If a band is supporting my band and then our crowd is not very nice to them, I would always go and apologize. That didn’t happen with Disturbed. I think it actually had the opposite effect and they were angry with us. But… not my problem.”
When Draiman saw the recap of Hawkins’ YouTube episode recently posted on Blabbermouth, the Disturbed frontman shared the story on Twitter, tagged Hawkins and The Darkness, and said, “Sorry you feel that way. There’s a lot of things I regret saying in the past and this is one of them. It’s been 20 years. I think we’re both old enough to have a pint at some point and laugh about it.”
One of the things he might also regret? Telling Metal Edge in 2004 that The Darkness “is a joke,” in retaliation for the band who “laid down the gauntlet” when they reportedly said Disturbed was part of “this whole wave of nu-metal that is near its death,” as reported by Blabbermouth.
Hawkins responded to Draiman’s apologetic Tweet last week with, “This is awesome! I don’t drink any more but I’ll take a non alcoholic beer. Thanks @davidmdraiman so cool that you reached out,” and then let the Disturbed singer know he slid into his DMs.
Let the bromance begin. We still believe in a thing called love!
Disturbed also dropped the new single “Hey You” last week and a new album, while there are no details on it yet, is imminent.
