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Loving the new echo chamber.
- The Parking Lot
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I remember thinking, “Okay, I’ve always liked ‘Disturbed’ for the most part, but if they get this wrong it could shift my opinion of them considerably in the opposite direction.”Muhuhahahaha....
That’s how much of a classic the 1964 original version by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is.
Listening to the album track by track, let’s just say it wasn’t the band’s best effort. It wasn’t necessarily a bad album, just nothing super surprising. I was getting super nervous around the tenth track, arguably the worst song the band has put out called “Fire It Up” where it’s just about Draiman talking about smoking weed after a long day’s work. This wasn’t exactly leading into the most anticipated track on the album well in my eyes.
And then I heard the gentle piano intro of their version of “Sound of Silence” begin to play, followed by Draiman’s haunting, low-key vocals. I didn’t know where things were headed but within the first ten seconds, I knew this had potential to be special if executed properly. Initially, my thoughts were, “I hope this is a slow-burn kind of track where the vocals are upped little by little, and there are some strings involved.” Even though this is how it unfolded, I couldn’t have imagined each transition into the next frame of the song being so seamless and effortless.
I always knew Draiman had some range and softness to offset the animalistic growls and howls he would showcase often in most of the band’s discography. The song “Darkness” from the band’s 2002 album “Believe” comes to mind where this gentler side is put on full display. And we hear this tone for about half of “Sound of Silence”. Ever so slowly, Draiman takes his hushed whisper of a tone to start the record, and morphs his voice into an echoing growl by the track’s end. Belting out with raw, unadulterated power the song’s final verses. It’s chilling, powerful, and most of all, inexplicably moving.
The 1964 version from Simon and Garfunkel is ominous and prophetic, of society being blinded by the advances made in human technology, where “the people bow and pray, to the neon god they made.” Disturbed’s version seems like a fulfillment of that prophecy coming true, neatly serving as a bookend to what Simon and Garfunkel tried to warn us about. Now, with “Disturbed” upping the ante in the song’s tone, the horror has come true. Humanity has their faces in their phones, tablets, and computers, and has become absolute zombies and slaves to those advances in technology Simon & Garfunkel predicted would appear over the horizon.
Because of all of this, I think this is the best cover of all-time. You could make a very strong case for Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”. After all, it was one of the final songs Cash ever did right before his death, which basically encapsulates his career and more importantly, his life and his regrets and successes along the way. I won’t argue with those saying that’s the best cover ever.
But to me, Disturbed absolutely knock it out of the park with “Sound of Silence”. So much so that Simon actually reached out to Draiman giving him his approval on their cover.