There are some elements of rock that have simply gotten stronger and stronger over time, immune to the dilutions of fashion and marketplace – and come to fruition in the millennial era. One of these is the passion of the hard rock vocal.
There could be no more ironic entry in this category than the cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1965 acoustic ballad “The Sound of Silence” by Disturbed, Chicago’s most powerful heavy metal outfit. Released in 2015 – a full half-century after the original – the Disturbed cover was an astounding success, the band’s high mark by far, and drew attention and praise across the public spectrum. Pop fans loved it. Heavy metal fans loved it. Folk fans and R&B fans and country fans loved it – many of them more than the original.
A bit of history here, before proceeding: “The Sound of Silence”1 was S&G’s first hit song, coming from their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.2 It actually saved the album, which tanked, reuniting a disappointed and disbanded duo when radio airplay in Boston and Florida inspired producer Tom Wilson to remix the song for a new radio release. He added electric guitars and drums, released the new version in September of 1965 – and Simon and Garfunkel were off and running. The song went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, spurring Simon (who had moved to England) and Garfunkel (who had returned to Columbia University) to reunite as a group and begin work on a new album. In one of the most stunning ironies in rock history, Wilson never told S&G that he was remixing and re-releasing the song – he just did it. S&G found out about it after the release.
The song itself is a gentle but damning ballad, a hymn of despair emerging from the failed solace of false refuge in a society where truth is illusive and meaning is a manufactured commodity. In five stanzas of seven lines each, S&G sing in perfect two-part harmony, letting both the vocals and music intensify only mildly and gradually, as the song’s emerging theme, that only those who are unheard have any real truths to speak. The song is haunting, its message stunning, its execution mesmerizing.
It falls into the category of folk rock, but few pop-rock fans of any persuasion would deny loving it. It is a bona fide classic, well deserving of decades of adulation.
Then along comes Disturbed, 50 years later. They redefine it, making it their own, as powerfully (if not more) as Whitney Houston took “I Will Always Love You” away from Dolly Parton in 1992.
Disturbed formed in 1994 – exactly three decades after S&G – around vocalist David Draiman, guitarist/keyboardist Dan Donegan, bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren. The band is a heavy metal powerhouse, one of the most commercially successful out there, with career album sales approaching 20 million and five consecutive #1 debut titles in the Billboard 200. They pretty fearlessly forged their own unique path, winning a broad following beyond the usual leathery studded fanboys.
They tackled “The Sound of Silence” as part of what amounted to a comeback album, having been on hiatus for four years before releasing Immortalized. The song’s themes – isolation, the search for truth and meaning, desperation – are all intact in Draiman’s reading, which is a complete revamp of what S&G did. The music is lush, breathtakingly dynamic where the original was lackluster (if not monotone) by comparison.
Draiman actually takes “dynamic” and wrings it till it screams for mercy. The Disturbed rendering is in F#m (the original is in Em), with a melancholy piano intro (the original used a solitary acoustic guitar) that brings Draiman in a full octave low, where he stays for the first two verses – joined on the second verse by Donegan’s guitar under the piano. A string ensemble unobtrusively slips in, mid-verse.
Draiman goes full-voice and jumps an octave as the third verse opens - “And in the naked light I saw / 10,000 people, maybe more...” - and the strings climb with him. His vocal has been almost whisper-low to this point, its only real energy derived of some melodic improvisations; now, his intensity rises, as he considers what he’s seeing around him - ‘...people talking without speaking / people hearing without listening / people writing songs that voices never share...”, his voice peaking at a staggering A4 (two and a half octaves from where he started).
Producer Kevin Churko now gives Draiman all the support he can, invoking orchestral swells from both the strings and timpani, putting thunder to Draiman’s words, who again breaks with the classic melody, hitting A4 again with the impassioned plea of “Take my arms that I might reach you,” bookending it with the full-vibrato frustration of “...but my words, like silent raindrops fell...”
And you can hear tears in Draiman’s voice as it splits between despair and rage as he again rises above the melody for “And the people bowed and prayed / To the neon god they made”. This is emotion far, far beyond anything that emerged from Simon & Garfunkel’s original – or, for that matter, from Simon & Garfunkel ever. When he hits the song’s musical, lyrical, and emotional crescendo (and, to be clear, its entire point) - “...the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls” - Draiman just lets go completely, in what would be considered a scream, in a lesser talent. The singer has found his truth – and it will not save him.
And there is a brokenness when, after the song’s shattering climax, Draiman’s voice abruptly takes on an almost unbearable sadness, accompanied only by Donegan’s mournful piano.
There is such power and poignance in this experience that words cannot adequately convey. Bring up the video on YouTube. Or, better yet, the live version from Conan.
Paul Simon gave the cover his enthusiastic approval in an email to Draiman, following that Conan performance. Draiman’s response: “Mr. Simon, I am honored beyond words. We only hoped to pay homage and honor to the brilliance of one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Your compliment means the world to me/us and we are eternally grateful.”
My point – and I do have one! - is that Disturbed offers a vindication of 21st century rock that qualifies it more eloquently than perhaps any other innovation or adaptation of the new era’s musical zeitgeist: the younger generation may be more disillusioned than their parents were in youth, but this has, despite the pontifications of the musical pundits, diminished not one iota their potential to see the world in new ways and express even the most familiar longings with new fire and artistry. It is, in some ways, more difficult today than it was in 1964 – but this masterpiece of a cover clearly makes the case that it is not only possible to achieve, but an essential and desperately needed direction for rock music, moving forward.
And it is the perfect anthem of millennia disaffection. It underscores the distance between their own generation and Paul Simon’s: the message of the original “Sound of Silence” is, in its essence, intellectual – it is a generation saying, “You must listen! We hear the unheard!”
But in the modern reading, “The Sound of Silence” - in Disturbed’s capable hands – goes emo. (“Hello darkness, my old friend...” You really can’t get any more emo than that.) The millennials hear this magnificent cover and say, “You must listen! We are the unheard!”
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