Customer Reviews

Healthy in Paranoid Times

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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.

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.

When you realize that a band like Our Lady Peace has been together for over a decade, it should make sense that they just will not sound the same. No band in existance has maintained the same sound album to album, and if they have, they didn't do very well. People like change, growth, maturity. They like different topics, they like seeing their fallen heroes rise again, they like seeing bad guys getting what's coming to them, and they like seeing those that once stood offstage finally take charge of their destiny and make themselves heard.

Throughout their career, Our Lady Peace has always fallen short of the explosion in the American market that so many Canadians get. They are HUGE in Canada, but not here. Many suppose that this was the reasoning for hiring Bob Rock as their producer and putting out the album Gravity (which is why a crucial member of their line-up left, that was the creative difference). Most OLP fans hate the album, but I can't share that sentiment. Regardless of their subject matter, regardless of how unique they are or aren't playing, I hear the same things coming from that group. Whether it be the musical dissonance that we've come to expect, or an interesting, dark twist on an old favorite...OLP has never failed to deliver to me songs that hit me in just the right way.

However, when I first picked up Healthy in Paranoid Times...I was REALLY disappointed. Had they gone too far? Was it possible that this was, in fact, their worst album? I wasn't ready to believe it, and I did actually find a few songs that I really really enjoyed. But overall, I just couldn't connect, you know? I felt left out, a place I've never felt with them before.

And then I went to see them perform at the 9:30 club in DC. It was very exciting for me, because the last performance of theirs I attended was on the date that Happiness was released. So yeah, it had been a while. They didn't perform my old favorites the way I remembered, and to be honest, I forgot some of the lyrics. But that didn't stop me from tearing up. I was connecting, I was rediscovering something I truly loved, and I was finding new material to love. They did some rather unexpected pieces from the new album. I didn't expect to enjoy "Boy" as much as I did. Nor did I think "Wipe That Smile Off Your Face" would be such a crowd favorite, but it was. The songs from their new album got the crowd really going, and you could see just who was a hardcore OLP fans from the ones who "remembered their glory days". They were the ones singing passionately to old *and* new songs alike.

So I took another listen. Maybe, just maybe, this was better than I thought. And yeah, it was.

First of all, "Angels/Losing/Sleep" may be the dumbest way to give us a song title, but the song itself is stunning. From the bayou twang of the opening guitar to the heavy bass falling in afterwards, to Raine's voice belting out some very odd lyrics, this song had me hooked. I'm glad I took the time to really listen to it, because this is an instant classic in my book.

"Where Are You", the first single off this album, is amazing. The lyrics are actually quite clever. "Tonight, did Punk Rock get it right, is there no future in sight? Is it different, now, is it different?" It's energetic, something which isn't a real OLP staple, but it's definitely something I can happily stomach.

"Wipe That Smile Off Your Face" is one of the angriest songs I've heard from them, and watching Raine shake on stage as he uttered those words into the microphone was chilling. He looked mortifyingly angry. It's such a wonderful song, I love listening to it when I am angry, it lets me vent.

Now Im not up on Raine's personal life, although I know he is married to Chantal Kreviazuk. If they had a child, I'd understand what he said at the concert about "Boy" being about one of those amazing unexpected moments in your life. I can't really be sure. But the song itself is heartfelt, and a pleasant listen.

"The World on a String" is another departure from style for them, but again, it works. It's fun to listen to, not too difficult to learn the lyrics, and nice to sing to. Definitely a good track.

"Don't Stop" is dirty dirty dirty! I never expected lyrics like this from them, but I don't mind! Good job, guys!

Those are the standout tracks, but the nice thing about music is that you form your own bond with your own selection of tracks. What I say here is simply my own personal experience. I do, however, highly recommend this to anyone (yes, even you), if to do nothing else than form your own bonds with the songs of your choice.

I tried copying this CD, not knowing that it was protected. So, I ripped it to my hard-drive and burned it. But, when I inserted the burned copy into my computer, the screen froze for a while, and an installer icon appeared on the taskbar in the bottom right. It installed somthing - and now I cannot burn anything, with any program. I've even tried using a different, external CD burner. A disk error comes up during burning, even if I am not not burning audio CDs.

This was not a fluke. I've talked to other people this has happened to. Avoid anything with "copy protection." Sony might as well burn viruses onto the CDs they distribute.

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.

Sony should be ashamed for infecting PCs in which this CD is played.

Amazon should stop selling this CD immediately given the known damage that is causes to computers.

Sony's DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection software is installed upon insertion of this "audio" cd into your computer. The software is malicious and can ruin your pc to the point of having to format and reinstall everything. This software also sends information about your pc to a Sony server. Do you want Sony to have ALL your information? The so called "patch" that Sony makes available to fix this software does nothing! The software also allows for virus, spyware, and other malicious programs to hide themselves and operate without detection. Currently there are no virus scanners (Norton, Mcafee, etc.) that can detect this software or the viruses it can help hide. The same goes for spyware.

What Can I say? This is a sensational album. Im looking forward to their arena tour.

This is probably one of their best albums yet. It sounds very reminiscent of some of their older music, nothing like Gravity which was a disappointment as an album, with more evolution to it.

This is my favorite band, and they made it even more obvious as to why they're known as the "thinking man's band" with songs like "Angels/ Losing/ Sleep", "Will the Future Blame Us", "Picture", Al Genina (Leave the Light On)", "Walking In Circles", "Love and Trust", "Apology" and "Wipe that Smile Off Your Face". Hell all the songs on the CD are good, I'm still having a hard time figuring out which song I like the best. "Wipe that Smile..." is one that comes to mind, as it's a very well crafted song it gives me chills every-time I hear it, same with "Angels". "Apology" however may steal the show as one of the best songs, as it's such a relaxed song that you could almost listen to it for 25 minutes straight. "Boy" is also a good song, it reminds me of something from mid/late '80s U2 ... you know, when U2 actually had depth and meaning to their lyrics. "World on a String" is a very awkward but catchy song, the melody almost seems cheesy, but the lyrics are so meaningful, which is one of OLPs trademarks, catch you with happy/off balance sounding melodies but then making you think with the lyrics.

In closing, if you're a fan, or not, but you were a bit disappointed in "Gravity", pick this album up today! It's one of the best yet. I actually pre-ordered it, and it got to me Friday, and it hasn't left the CD player yet. Unlike Gravity where I tend to skip through certain songs to get to some of the better ones, I never found myself doing that with any of their albums until then either, and guess what? I don't skip any songs with "HIPT", this is an awesome album. Buy it and see for yourself.

It's a step in the right direction.

With this disk OLP has stepped out of the modern rock obscurity that was the disappointing Gravity, and have once again claimed a unique sound. Guitarist Steve Mazur moves from crunchy electric to acoustic to haunting ambient sounds with ease, and sets off Raine Maida's caterwauling beautifully. Speaking of Raine, it seems he has learned to sing, and yet maintains his token falcetto. It works.

Duncan and Jeremy deliver bass and drums lines that are interesting, a departure from the steady 2/4 of the last album.

The choice track is the haunting "Al Genina (Leave a Light On)" - the first indication that the band is Canadian comes from the lyrics fell asleep tonight//in North Ontario ... Love it.

This will no doubt be billed as a political album, with Raine's work with War Child taking prominence over the actual work. I feel that Jeremy is right when he says, "We're just a couple of guys who like playing music."

It's a great CD for a music fan. Not nearly as dark as older OLP, and highly accessible for new fans, it surprisingly does not alienate the old crowd. You win, guys. You're keeping old fans and making old ones. Kudos.