Healthy in Paranoid Times

Our Lady Peace

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 30, 2005)
• Original Release Date: August 30, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B000CMNJEA
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,702 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
While Our Lady Peace's lead singer, Raine Maida, can be accused of writing rather cryptic lyrics, the liner notes of the new OLP CD are anything but subtle. The artwork kicks off with the statement "1165 days were needed to record Healthy In Paranoid Times"; the remaining pages show no lyrics or band shots, just statistics varying from how many people died of AIDS in that span of time (9.8 million) to how much money was spent on the arms trade ($3 trillion). Time spent by Raine and wife Chantal Kreviazuk overseas with the War Child charity have deeply affected the singer and it shows. On Healthy, the band's music is orchestral right from the get-go. "Angels/Losing/Sleep" jumps from quiet, fragile moments to emo-implosions, not only showcasing Raine's unique vocals, but also how undercurrents of combative guitar solos can turn a simple melody into something wonderfully unsettling, a true OLP trait. The group's frenetic first single, "Where Are You" is singer Maida's plea to a society enshrouded in indulgence, while "Boy" has the raw passion of early U2, with the song rising to a joyful, moving climax. One of the disc's strongest tracks is "Don't Stop." While not mimicking Radiohead or Coldplay, the group seems to embrace the like-minded love of turning a four-minute melody into something more orchestral and emotional, a thread consistent throughout this well-crafted disc. --Denise Sheppard

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars WARNING: this album will install a virus on your computer, November 4, 2005

By	bgsu_drew (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

The cd will install this virus called a "rootkit" on your computer: [...]

The copy-protection software on this album dangerously installs programs that run automatically and intentionally hide themselves.

Just putting the cd in my computer unwittingly installed some software. It starts a service called "XCP CD Proxy" and caused my computer to hide folders and files starting with a dollar sign. It also installed and hid files in windows\system32\$sys$filesystem directory and automatically runs a file named $sys$DRMServer.exe, which sucks system resources even when the cd isn't playing AND THERE IS NO UNINSTALLER.

For some excellent research on this rootkit, check out this page: http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

Oh, the music is alright, but low by Our Lady Peace standards. For a far superior album, try Spiritual Machines.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars CD contains DRM software that opens your system to viruses, November 12, 2005

By	Phillip Roncoroni "goodcowfilms.com" (Manhattan, New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As many people may know by now, Sony was recently caught with egg on their face when a security specialist found out that a recently purchased CD (Van Zant: Get Right With The Man) from Sony music not only installed DRM software (digital rights management, to limit and outright prevent copying music to certain devices), but it did so in such a sneaky way that it hid itself entirely from Windows, and opened the system up to security issues such as viruses.

This CD has the same copyright protection, called XCP. When installed, Sony hijacks your computer and installs custom software which:

1) Hides itself entirely from Windows by installing as a rootkit
2) Hides itself in such a manner that any files begining with $sys$ are also hidden. For example, if you install the XCP copy protection software on your machine, and rename "document.doc" to "$sys$document.doc" it then becomes invivisble to you forever.
3) Installs its own custom CD-Rom drivers to hijack your system. It also sneakily names these drivers "Plug and Play Device Manager" to seem as if it's a part of Windows. Trying to delete these drivers manually will disable your CD-Rom drive entirely.
4) Offers no uninstall option until you manually contact Sony

As of my writing this review, Sony has "apologized" for this incident, and claims they will "re-evaluate" this copyright protection software on their CDs in the future.

In the meantime, a virus is currently running wild, which names itself begining with $sys$ in an attempt to hide from the user and virus scanners.

Several class action lawsuits are also pending against Sony right now.

In summary, as you can tell from above, Sony's actions here are absolutely horrible. This is your music. You purchased it, and they should not have any right to dictate how you can use it, let alone install software which compromises your system security.

This is one of the CDs with Sony's XCP copyright protection software on it, and as a result, you should not buy it to send a message to Sony that this will NOT be tolerated in the future.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the same OLP. But hey, it's better than Gravity., September 21, 2005

By	A. Schroeter (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Over three years ago, Our Lady Peace put out an album that single-handedly shunned probably 85% of the band's long-time fanbase, while making fans of Avril Lavigne and Nickelback take notice of them because they sang about purple hair and being sorry. In other words, it was the end of Our Lady Peace's once twisted, carnival-like world as we knew it, and was replaced by a world full of derivation and triteness. But hey, the album went gold, so they really taught them, right?

Flash forward three years now. Surely everyone has had to come to grips that Our Lady Peace will never be Our Lady Peace ever again. Raine has given Avril fans further excuse to listen to the band, as he helped out on her last album behind the scenes. This new album has to suck. It just has to. But here's the kicker -- it doesn't... as long as you let go of the notion that the old OLP can ever return. But that can be a hard thing to do, so many are just going to jump the "OLP hater" bandwagon because the band isn't writing songs about big green monkeys or birdmen anymore.

So why exactly is this a good album? The songs are just stronger than "Gravity." Raine Maida's vocals in that album lacked any concern or conviction, and made most of it feel flat. Now the only thing that feels flat about Our Lady Peace's music these days is the terrible production, thanks again to "Gravity" producer, the Svengali-like Bob Rock. Really, someone needs to tell this man his style just isn't suited for rock music. He needs to start producing Britney or Hilary Duff, and leave the rock music to the professionals. Sorry, Bob, you're the biggest weakness on this disc. You ALMOST ruin the songs on the album. Luckly, Raine is feeling like a human being again, and Steve Mazur has turned into Mike Turner III (MT Jr. is probably still out there hiding somewhere, and big Mike is in a band that's putting out music worse than "Somewhere Out There").

In short, if you're a long-time Our Lady Peace fan, you're probably going to hate it at first... or forever. But please, look past the squeaky clean production and the sometimes overly-simplistic lyrics. Underneath all of that, there's a good album waiting to be heard by you, and waiting to show people who loved "Gravity" that they were in love with drivel all along.