Don't Be Afraid (album)

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This article is about the album by Information Society. For the song by Aaron Hall, see Don't Be Afraid (song).

Professional reviews
Don't Be Afraid

Studio album by Information Society
Released	September 23, 1997
Genre	Industrial Electronic Synth rock
Length	59:46
Label	Cleopatra Records
Producer(s)	Kurt Harland Fred Maher Steven Seibold
All Music Guide link
Information Society chronology
Peace & Love, Inc. (1992)	Don't Be Afraid (1997)	InSoc Recombinant (1999)

Don't Be Afraid is a 1997 Industrial / electronic album by Information Society. It saw a dramatic change in creative direction from the pop stylings of Information Society's earlier work to a darker sound with prominent themes of paranoia and disaffection with modern life. The sound of Don't Be Afraid is most similar to the late '90s dark industrial work of Gary Numan.

The album was created as a solo effort by Information Society frontman Kurt Harland. After the breakup of the band in the mid-90s, Harland decided to retain the band name for this album. In 2006, the band reunited (with Harland opting out) and reassumed the name.

1 Track listing
2 White Roses
3 Credits
4 Trivia
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Track listing

"Empty 3.0" — 8:32
"Closing In 2.0" — 8:11
"On The Outside 2.1" — 6:46
"Ending World 1.1" — 5:31
"Seek300 2.11" — 4:29
"The Sky Away 2.0" — 3:59
"Are 'Friends' Electric? 2.0" — 5:41
"Ozar Midrashim 1.1" — 6:52
"The Ridge 1.1" — 8:41
"White Roses 1.1 (300 8-N-1 ASCII Mode Or Terminal Download)" (modem noise) — 0:56

All songs composed by Kurt Harland, except "Are 'Friends' Electric?" by Gary Numan.

The retail release of Don't Be Afraid includes a bonus multimedia disc with videos, photos and other documents from the earlier years of Information Society offered from Harland's personal stash.

[edit] White Roses

The 10th track on Don't Be Afraid is titled "White Roses" and sounds as 55 seconds of modem noise. When decoded, text data is displayed revealing clues for of an internet scavenger hunt of sorts to collect 16 separate .arj-compressed, password-protected files which add up to the completed White Roses song in .wav format. Most of the pieces are now lost, due to hosting being taken down.

Don't Be Afraid's Brazilian cover

The song itself is a dark synth and acoustic guitar epic clocking in at over 7 minutes with an overt Alice in Wonderland theme of delusion and disorientation. The website Spacemutiny has a page of information related to this hunt and features an mp3 download of the complete song.

[edit] Credits

Kurt Harland: Vocals, Producer, Mixing
Fred Maher: Guitar, Producer, Mixing
Steven Seibold: Guitar, Drums, Producer, Mixing

Don't Be Afraid's German cover

[edit] Trivia

The instrumental track "Ozar Midrashim" also appears during the intro of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, a video game with music and sound composed by Harland.
The Brazilian release of the album has three bonus tracks — remixes of "Closing In", "Are 'Friends' Electric?", and "On The Outside" by DJ Double B. Also, it had the full "White Roses" song, rather than the hidden message. However, it lacked the multimedia bonus disc.
The Brazilian and German releases were given new covers, as the local publishers deemed the original one as "too satanic" (as it resembled the Baphomet).