Recording and releasing a cover of the most important track ever written by an iconic band who helped to outline a complete style is a daring transfer. Sure, having your identify related to a world well-known banger is a stable look, however get it flawed and you will be rejected by the fanbase of the very artist you are making an attempt to honour – and, fairly frankly, you will appear like a bunch of absolute wallies.
But it was a threat that Italian goth metallers Lacuna Coil had been prepared to take once they made the choice to cover Enjoy The Silence, the haunting, irresistible trademark anthem of beloved British synthpop megaweights, Depeche Mode.
“The idea of covering Enjoy The Silence started from me!” beamed Lacuna Coil singer Cristina Scabbia when discussing the monitor with Metal Hammer in 2024. “I love Depeche Mode.”
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It was 2005, and the Italians had been placing collectively songs for what would turn out to be their fourth studio album, Karmacode. A vital launch, it was to be the follow-up to their 2002 breakthrough file, Comalies. That album had seen them tour the world with main artists, safe a coveted spot on Ozzy Osbourne‘s touring mega-festival Ozzfest and get US radio airplay – a rarity for European steel bands in that period.
“We are a band that can’t repeat the same record over and over,” co-vocalist Andrea Ferro later instructed Metal Hammer. “There was a bit of pressure [to follow up Comalies], but you just can’t control that. We tried to push it out; we wanted to raise our voice, what we are and where we wanted to go.”
The concept got here began from me! I really like Depeche Mode
Cristina Scabbia
While they’d amassed a good quantity of unique materials, Lacuna Coil thought it might be a pleasant contact to pay tribute to 1 of the bands that had impressed them probably the most, and determined so as to add a cover track to the file. Led by Cristina, they settled on Enjoy The Silence and knocked out a contemporary model of the monitor. Before it may formally be added to the album, although, one key member wanted convincing.
“I remember that Marco [Coti Zelati], our bass player who writes the majority of the music, wasn’t really agreeing,” Cristina revealed. “He was just like, ‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not.’ But then he turned it, in a way, that it almost became one of our songs, because the style was really Lacuna Coil. So we all started to like the whole project.”
With a heavier, extra overtly gothic tackle the traditional monitor now of their again pocket, Lacuna Coil determined they needed to launch it as a single. But they required yet one more seal of approval to take action – from Depeche Mode themselves. Luckily, they’d been working with somebody who had the correct connections to seek out out – Ronald Prent, the Grammy-nominated Dutch producer who’d labored with Depeche Mode on the unique model of Enjoy The Silence.
“You can cover any song you like, but in order to do an official video, you need the permission of the band who actually created the song,” Cristina defined. “It turned out so good that the actual band liked it! They gave us permission to do a video for it.”
It wasn’t simply Depeche Mode and Lacuna Coil themselves who preferred the cover. Released because the second single from Karmacode on July 11 2006, Enjoy The Silence was greeted warmly by each Lacuna Coil followers and Depeche Mode followers who stumbled throughout it. It made the highest 30 of the singles charts in Spain and the band’s native Italy, and solely missed out on the distinguished UK prime 40 by one spot. It additionally broke Lacuna Coil exterior of the steel bubble for the primary time, getting them elevated airplay on platforms like MTV.
“It’s the song that I think brought us outside the metal scene,” Andrea confirmed. “We were known, at that point, in the metal scene, but Enjoy The Silence is the song everybody knows, even if they’re not particularly into metal or don’t listen to rock music.”
It’s the track that I feel introduced us exterior the steel scene
Andrea Ferro
Years later, Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan would lastly publicly acknowledge the cover and his band’s appreciation of it, saying in 2009: “Their interpretation left me genuinely impressed. It encapsulated the distinctive vibe I always hoped someone would bring to it.”
Those phrases clearly meant one thing to Cristina and Andrea: in 2024, they revealed that they nonetheless hadn’t met Depeche Mode themselves, however had been eager to thank them for his or her approval and their inspiration. The monitor’s legacy stays: as of 2026, it’s nonetheless their most comfortably streamed track, proving that generally, taking a threat and placing your personal spin on a sacred traditional can repay.
“We’re so proud,” beamed Cristina to Hammer. “It’s one of our most popular songs.”
