South Africa's supreme Industrial Machine Chaos Doctrine is back with a sweltering rendition of the Depeche Mode classic ‘Enjoy The Silence’ to treat your membranes (whilst you wait just a little longer for their sophomore album to be released).

What better band to pay tribute to than the iconic English Electronic Pioneers who had such a profound impact on Industrial (and all genres globally since inception in 1980).

Spawned in their renowned domain (Gemini AD Studios), Chaos Doctrine has taken this epic track and solidly stamped their unique brand of Industrial Thrash onto this classic, duly delivering an intense interpretation exclusively available for free on Bandcamp.

The Lyric Video pays supplementary homage to the iconic imagery that saw ‘Enjoy The Silence’ and ‘Violator’ propel the band into international stardom in 1990.

Note: Best played on full blast, with a high likelihood of singing along!


Vocalist Dr D explains the origin of the cover: “Our fans will know we like doing covers in our way, putting that heavy Chaos Doctrine stamp on them. Usually, people either love or hate what we do to songs, with no in between! We did that with Refuse/Resist and especially Ace of Spades.  After dropping a “closer to original” homage to SLAYER with South of Heaven last year, we wanted to do something very different: take a song that is not metal and make it our own. Alec suggested Enjoy the Silence – and since I have been a Depeche Mode fan most of my life, I was in. The track brought a new challenge to us: not only did we have to hold back on guitars and bass in favour of the keys and synths, but the vocals are also very different to my style. We didn’t want to revert to the very brutal Chaos Doctrine vocals in the front – so we went with it and I think it came out pretty damn good!”


Bassist and band visual artist Phil Carstens adds: “amidst COVID lockdown, we wanted to take a break from completing the finishing touches on our new album (set for release 25 June 2021) and do something different. This cover provided exactly that outlet, because Enjoy the Silence is unlike anything we have done before. Because the track has been covered many times, and Depeche Mode themselves did a remix of it, we had to bring our best game to make sure our interpretation is uniquely Chaos Doctrine, while also sounding new for us. I think we accomplished that.”


“I was really excited about the idea of a Depeche Mode cover”, says ‘new’ drummer Rory Townes. “While it was admittedly very different to what I am used to, it also provided a very unique and exciting opportunity. We approached the track with an open mind – paying respect to the original groove of the song in such a way that it is still almost a dance track. But, Chaos Doctrine being the industrial thrash machine, Dr D’s vocal melodies and Alec and Phil’s riffage were underpinned by heavy industrial, polished off with some serious double bass grooves and a bit of old school blasting towards the end for one helluva conclusion. This is a monstrous tribute - play it at max volume!”


Finally, the man who’s idea the cover was – SA Metal veteran and Chaos Doctrine guitarist and band producer Alec Surridge elaborates: “Depeche Mode embodies my pre-teen and teen years. My brother was a fan and that made me a fan. I’ve wanted to do a DM track for the longest time but with so many good songs, it was a difficult choice. If I could have chosen, I would have done a full album of DM tracks, hahaha! The thing with the original, as with so many of DM’s songs, is that they’re functional – there is very little fluff to them. When it came to working out what to do with this song, we ended up layering far beyond what the song needed. In the end, we stripped back so much to get to “enough” for the song – that point where it is the best of Chaos Doctrine at that moment in time. It is our homage to one of the greatest darkpop bands ever!”