In 2015, Disturbed released its sixth album, Immortalized. If you look at the summary of critical reception over at Wikipedia, you'd think there wasn't much to talk about. Based on the flood of praise for the band's cover of "The Sound of Silence" I discovered years after the fact, I would certainly question such conclusions.
Once the video for the cover was released later that year, things began to change, and it was even nominated for a Grammy in 2017 as Best Rock Performance (losing to David Bowie's sentimental favorite, "Blackstar," with other nominees including Twenty One Pilots' "Heathens," featured as one of the few original songs in Suicide Squad).
These days I discover music most easily on YouTube, which is how it went with this song, which has since remained, in the years that've followed, one of my most frequent views on the site. It's a powerful vocal performance (suggestions always include testimonies to such), a heavy and yet elegant reinterpretation of the classic Simon & Garfunkel harmonies, plus a spare but equally effective accompaniment. I get that Disturbed is not known for this kind of music, so the band's fans, and anyone else following their activities, probably never expected it in a million years (although maybe they did? I have no idea), but if a classic song gets a new version that's this good? You don't quibble with its provenience. And it should be hailed widely both for its own time and as part of the continuum of the rock genre. Which is of course impossible in the current "rock is dead" era that must be continuously affirmed by never, ever admitting anything good can possibly still happen.
In a perfect world radio (which still exists) would have this in regular rotation. Not just stations catering to Disturbed's regular fanbase, but to the broader set, where it really belongs.
A classic is a classic.
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