The Heavy-Metal Band Disturbed Covered Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” Ten Years Ago, and It’s Still Topping the Charts

“The Sound of Silence” Is the Most Met­al Song of the Past Decade”: imag­ine that head­line, and the con­trar­i­an cul­ture piece prac­ti­cal­ly writes itself. Not so long ago, Slate was noto­ri­ous for pub­lish­ing that kind of thing, but it seems they’ve now put that sen­si­bil­i­ty behind them — or at least most­ly behind them. “If you’re in the mood for an under­dog sto­ry,” writes that site’s Luke Winkie, “I rec­om­mend perus­ing Bill­board­’s Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart. It is home to, gen­uine­ly, one of the most sub­stan­tial feats of endurance in the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, and it shows no sign of slow­ing down any­time soon. I speak, of course, of Dis­turbed’s cov­er of the Simon & Gar­funkel clas­sic ‘The Sound of Silence,’ which has been at, or near, the apex of that chart since 2015.”

While you almost cer­tain­ly know Simon & Gar­funkel, you may not know Dis­turbed, who’ve been steadi­ly pop­u­lar in the met­al world since the release of their debut album The Sick­ness in 2000. Lis­ten to that album’s big sin­gle “Down with the Sick­ness,” and you’re instant­ly trans­port­ed back to the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the exag­ger­at­ed­ly rhyth­mic and aggres­sive sub­genre of “nu met­al” reigned supreme.

Enter­tain­ing though the sheer incon­gruity of a nu-met­al ver­sion of “The Sound of Silence” would be, that move­ment had long since flamed out by 2015, when Dis­turbed record­ed their cov­er of Simon & Gar­funkel’s sig­na­ture song. Instead, they take the haunt­ing aus­ter­i­ty of the orig­i­nal in a grand­ly mourn­ful direc­tion, dri­ven by piano, strings, and the kind of cav­ernous sen­si­tiv­i­ty in which met­al acts occa­sion­al­ly indulge.

“Simon & Garfunkel’s ver­sion is best suit­ed for The Grad­u­ate,” writes Winkie, “while Dis­turbed’s take seems tuned for the end-cred­its scroll of a Trans­form­ers flick.” Inclu­sion in a Hol­ly­wood block­buster might have explained the song’s decade-long dom­i­nance of the afore­men­tioned Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart: a minor are­na in itself, but one in which this per­pet­u­al vic­to­ry reflects a wider cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. Though young peo­ple may nev­er have heard Dis­turbed’s “The Sound of Silence” — or indeed Simon & Gar­funkel’s — it’s drawn intense and abid­ing enthu­si­asm from lis­ten­ers in their six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies, for whose approval met­al bands haven’t con­ven­tion­al­ly angled. Nev­er­the­less, it had to mark a high point in Dis­turbed’s career when, after per­form­ing the song on Conan, they received high praise from one par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guished mem­ber of that demo­graph­ic: a cer­tain Paul Simon.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the His­to­ry of Simon and Gar­funkel

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.