System of a Down

 

December 4, 2005

BY JIM DeROGATIS Pop Music Critic
 

System of a Down

 

December 4, 2005

BY JIM DeROGATIS Pop Music Critic
 

SYSTEM OF A DOWN, "HYPNOTIZE" (SONY) ***1/2

 

As if the heavy-metal/art-rock/worldbeat/rap-rock, political/scatological quartet System of a Down wasn't already unique enough, last week the band of Los Angeles-based Armenian Christians made history on Billboard's pop albums chart by scoring their second No. 1 debut in six months, with the final installment of the double album "Hypnotize"/"Mezmerize" following on the heels of Part 1's arrival last spring.

"Hypnotize" adheres to the same Frank Zappa-inspired ethic as "Mezmerize," which is to say that the musical blueprint is such a complicated, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink pastiche of divergent styles that there seems to be no plan or logic at all. But System of a Down's strength is that it can tie together a Middle Eastern folk riff, a hip-hop groove and a burst of thrash metal guitar all in the space of four bars by linking them with an indelible vocal melody or a searing guitar riff. And the riffs on "Hypnotize" are overall stronger than those on its predecessor.

The album still suffers from the band's central shortcoming, however. Its explosions of eloquently voiced political outrage -- most notable here on "Attack" ("Bombs illustrate what we already know/Candles cry toward the sky /Bracing your plants of a polluted coast/Dreaming of the day that/We attack!") and "Holy Mountains" (a protest of the pre-World War I Armenian genocide) -- are undercut by the pointless surrealism or sophomoric potty humor of other tracks such as "Vicinity of Obscenity" ("Liar! Liar! Banana, banana, banana ... terra-cotta pie!") and "She's Like Heroin" ("She wants nothing more/Than to be a little whore"). Musically, these tracks are as gripping as the others, and they deserve a stronger lyrical foundation.

Both of these albums represent a significant creative peak in post-hair metal hard rock, and each is worthy of fans' consideration on its own merits. But combined into one well-edited disc that was all killer, no filler "Hypnotize"/"Mezmerize" would have been a stone-cold classic with a place in the pantheon beside the best of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Rush. Thankfully, we have home editing and CD-burning software to do exactly that.

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