One of the most popular bands in the past decade or so is Disturbed.  Not just a name but a target audience too!  Well, their target audience isn’t actually those who are disturbed--but rather the young kids who really, really wish they were so their LJ posts about living in hell would be autobiographical and not fantastic.


The song, Down with the Sickness is probably their most popular, which is must be why the Down with the Sickness ringtone is their most popular download.  In fact, the ringtone is one of the most popular overall, making just barely in the top 10 at the last possible slot.  That’s pretty impressive given the song is old and has no real artistic value.

I have to give them a hand, though, for giving so many little Romeos hope of having a terrible life.  If millionaire rock-stars can hate life, so can the little boy down the block that wears the highest quality brand of black T-shirts, tight jeans (customized with home-made holes and safety-pinned band patches) and Down with the Sickness ringtone.

But really, what happened to morbidity?  Following through to the 20th century popular artistic efforts on the grotesque and terrible were through the veins of writers like HP Lovecraft, Rudyard Kipling, and Edgar Allen Poe.  Even in the middle of this past century we had craftsmen such as Rod Sterling and Alfred Hitchcock.  Now we have Disturbed and Slipknot at the forefront.  Stupendous.