I heard a song by the band 311 the other day calledCrossfireand I enjoyed it. It kicks in to gear right away with some heavy guitar and builds up to a satisfying chorus. While I am not the biggest 311 fan, I added the song to my library and have rocked out to it the last couple of days.
However, there seems to be a controversy brewing surrounding this song as it appears to blatantly copy another song released almost four years ago by Irish DJ Noisestorm titledHeist. While Noisestorm’s track is all electronic and 311’s is all guitar, the sound is a near match.
Soundcloud user Randum mixed the two tracks together into one track and after listening to it, it is hard to argue that 311 accidentally copied or didn’t try to cover Noisestorm’s song. Together the tracks line up almost perfectly, without any alterations to either song, including the beats-per-minute.
Noisestorm tweeted about the song Saturday morning and he doesn’t seem happy with the new 311 song. He said that he has “no problems with them making their own version / cover ofHeist” and that he would have let 311 use it “if [311] wrote a short email asking for permission before releasing it instead of passing it off as completely their own work.”
What do you think? Is 311 guilty of blatant plagiarism or do these songs sound completely different to you?