Enjoy the Silence

The soundtrack for last year’s Masters of Horror series on Showtime seemed like a good idea – take new and unreleased songs from the hottest metal/metalcore/screamo/emo bands of the moment, spread the goods across two discs, and wrap the whole thing in nice packaging. So I picked up the soundtrack and put it into my computer, only to have DRM spyware brazenly and irrevocably install itself. This was the same shit Sony pulled in that whole scandal last year. The packaging gave no warning of copy protection. Disgusted, I extracted the CD from my now-compromised computer and immediately put it up on Amazon with a warning about the DRM.

The lesson: DO NOT PLAY THESE CD’S IN A COMPUTER. Or, if you do, disable “autorun” first (which in general is a good idea). This applies to Windows users, as evidently Mac OS X has disabled autorun (Mac users should confirm this). Here’s how to disable autorun.

This was too bad, as I was really looking forward to one song in particular, It Dies Today’s cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” Now, I’m generally not a fan of metalcore bands with swoop do’s. But “Enjoy the Silence” is one of my all-time favorite songs, and the online sample of the cover seemed decent. And while I don’t advocate piracy of music, when I saw a copy of this soundtrack floating around the Internet, I couldn’t help but smile. Someone had cracked the DRM, and more power to them. When you essentially declare war against your own customers, you reap what you sow.

But you don’t have to cruise the Internet’s back alleys to hear this, thanks to everyone’s favorite copyright infringement medium – YouTube. Seriously, I don’t get why embedding a YouTube video is any less of a copyright violation than posting an MP3. Arguably, you “possess” an MP3, while with YouTube, you’re just streaming content from their servers – which would make Google’s acquisition of YT unbelievably stupid since such centrality is what brought down Napster. On the other hand, YouTube videos aren’t substitutes for music purchases like downloaded MP3’s can be. In any case, having Google’s legal muscle behind YouTube now is a good thing.

Legal bullshit aside, here are two covers of “Enjoy the Silence” by It Dies Today and Lacuna Coil. HIM has also done one, but it’s so unbelievably bad I won’t bother with it. IDT and LC don’t get it right, either, but to various degrees. In fact, I generally dig IDT’s version until the end when the singer screams, “Enjoy the silence!!!” Talk about missing the point. Lacuna Coil, a band I usually like, turn the song into an overproduced, new-age travesty. At least IDT had the good sense to interpret the song’s drum break, which LC ignored completely. I’ll stop blabbering and let you see/hear for yourself:

It Dies Today – Enjoy the Silence

. . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7y4YeZnkxo]

. . .

Lacuna Coil – Enjoy the Silence

. . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx58hXh4pVA]

. . .