“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.
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.
