### System Of A Down: Steal this album!

#### 09/09/10 || Altmer

OK, so how many of you were born after 1987? Well, if you were born in the late 80s/early 90s, you will sure as fuck remember the nu-metal plague that cropped up around the turn of the century. You’ll probably also remember that you loved that first Linkin Park album (OK, maybe some of you didn’t, replace it with Korn, Slipknot, whatever was en vogue these days), but as you got turned onto Behemoth and Vader, and then onto Obscurum Grandum from Iceland and Genital Rejections from Vaginia (or whatever obfuscatory band from whatever obfuscatory country you prefer to support/slurp semen from), you dropped that pussy metal. You remember another band from that era called System of a Down, that got lumped in with those bands, toured with them, and came up during exactly that era?

Yeah, me too, and I loved them back in the day.

Want to know something even more funny, something that you probably didn’t see coming? They’re still good. The reason: they got unfairly pigeonholed with all those nu-metal bands, because the only thing they share is that they use distorted guitars and sometimes Serj sings quite fast. But actually, this is a unique band, that sounds more like Frank Zappa meets Slayer with leftist political overtones. Fucken weirdos, this lot. Whatever people have said about this band, they don’t belong and never will belong to the nu-metal scene. The truth is, they make quality music that happened to get popular – and I don’t mind it all.

The reason for this is the following: Serj is a fucken seriously good vocalist. He’s got an extreme range that goes from bizarrely high and falsetto to something approaching a Slayerish yell. He’s got power and aggression in his voice, he’s got moody and melodic, and he’s got something spoken that will terrify you with the sheer power. He transforms even mediocre songs like “Thetawaves” into something good just by his voice. He’s got a definite X-factor and is part of the reason why this band is so good – he can carry a catchy tune home delightfully well regardless of who’s backing him up.

Now as for what’s backing him up – fucken out of this world songwriting. Daron Malakian (who would be more influential vocally on the next two albums) is a writer of truly quality riffs – it’s herky-jerky, bulldozerish distortion, thunder and lightning. heavy yet melodic, powerful, and able to change tempos and moods on the drop of a hat. The band dabbles in quite a few genres and moods and incorporates them effortlessly. This band knows how to make zany musical ideas work because they always underscore them with something so delightfully riddled with hooks that anything they do, no matter how off-the-wall the idea seems, it works. And it works almost invariably – this SOAD album only has a few low points in the songwriting, “Thetawaves” being one, “36” and “Pictures” being the other skippable songs. Some would say you could include “Roulette” but that song works for me, so eh.

Almost every song is a highlight here, and they vary from political anthems (“Boom!”, “A.D.D. (American Dream Denial)”), to completely fucked up lyrics (“Chic ‘n’ Stu”, “I-E-A-I-A-I-O”) to more straightforward material such as “Inner Vision” and “Ego Brain”. Even the twisted moody intro of “Mr Jack” that recalls earlier material such as “Peephole” is fantastically upgraded and climaxes into an amazing song.

And to think this album was touted as a bunch of B-sides (they were excluded from “Toxicity” because they didn’t fit the continuity of that album)! If these songs are your B-sides, and they were only released as a full album because most of the songs that are on here were leaked previously by bootleggers, so the band decided to record them, change the lyrics and put out an official album – hence also the album title, then you have some fucken skills with writing songs.

In short: if you yearn for days of old, and want to hear something that was popular and sounded metally from around 2000, this is your album. It is a notch or three above anything that any of their contemporaries released and a unique album for what it is.

Recommendation: Reform. Your side projects are not as good as the original band is when they play together.

- Information
- Released: 2002
- Label: American Recordings
- Website: www.systemofadown.com
- Band
- Serj Tankian: vocals
- Daron Malakian: guitars, backing vocals
- Shavo Odadjian: bass
- John Dolmayan: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Chic ‘n’ Stu
- 02. Inner Vision
- 03. Bubbles
- 04. Boom!
- 05. Nüguns
- 06. A.D.D. (American Dream Denial)
- 07. Mr Jack
- 08. I-E-A-I-A-I-O
- 09. 36
- 10. Pictures
- 11. Highway Song
- 12. Fuck the System
- 13. Ego Brain
- 14. Thetawaves
- 15. Roulette
- 16. Streamline