From left: Shavo Odajian (Bass), Serj Tankian (Vocal), John Dolmayan (Drums), Daron Malakian (Guitar).
You can count on System, one of rocks most daring and innovative bands, to do things in its own way, and with a level of commitment that'll knock the wind right out of you. This bands what Public Enemy once was and what Rage Against the Machine never quite managed to be: the potent trifecta of credibility, sincerity and real danger, pronounced Esquire on naming them Best Agitators in the magazines 2005 Esky Music Awards.
Fate chose this group of Armenian Americans, two of whom were born in Lebanon, one in Armenia and another in Hollywood, as unknowing prophets. Toxicity, Systems second album, appeared on Sept. 4, 2001 and was at the top of the charts on Sept. 12, while America and the world were paralyzed with grief, shock and fear. Perhaps because the music of Toxicity was so uncompromising and yet so full of humanity at its extremes, it provided a suitably harrowing soundtrack for that unimaginable moment, striking a deep nerve. The album generated four Top 10 singles, including the ..1 Aerials, and went on to sell 6 million copies, establishing System not as some prefab mainstream commercial entity but rather as an urgent voice in the uncharted wilderness that was heard and believed by a great many human beings.
System of a Down wrote some 30 tracks for Mezmerize/Hypnotize and recorded them at Rubin's Laurel Canyon studio between June and November of 2004. The new songs are more complex, more progressive, more unorthodox and more experimental than ever, while retaining the idiosyncratic, ironic and schizophrenic qualities that make System of a Down so distinctive. Among the uncompromising songs contained on Mezmerize are Cigaro, Violent Pornography, Sad Statue, Radio/Video and Revenga.
The band has no overriding concept, meaning each of their albums isjust as Dolmayan says essentially a representation of these particular individuals at a particular moment in time. Simple, right? Right. And also incredibly complexas complex as human beings and the world they're living in, a world seemingly without absolutes or easy answers.
Just over a year later, the band offered up Steal This Album!, made up of tracks that had been started during the Toxicity sessions but didnt fit that albums dedicated confrontational vibetracks that put a greater emphasis on melody and the two-part harmonies of Malakian and Tankian. With Steal!, System, which up to that point had pitched nothing but fastballs (although some were of the split-finger variety), showed that it had a command of all kinds of stuff, and potent stuff at that. Thus, Mezmerize /Hypnotize is both the long-awaited follow-up to Toxicity in big-picture terms and a natural progression from Steal This Album! in a musical sense.
