System Of A Down - 'Hypnotize' (American / Columbia)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Growing up, people who sounded like this were genuinely a little scary. Your Slipknots and your Manson's not only made music that to young impressionable ears sounded wholly unholy, but they looked as if they'd guaranteed themselves a place in hell just by getting dressed in the morning. But heck was it intriguing. And so you started listening, trying to scare yourself a little bit more, eventually getting bored of the pretence of horror and wanting something crucially more musically gripping out of the endeavour. And with this, you ended up at System of a Down.
Sure, they didn't look like your folks, but you could tell which parts of their bodies were which at least. What made them winners was that their tunes were unique. You were scared by the others, but you never really took them seriously. This was different. Quirky, brutally heavy and worryingly infectious, 'Toxicity'-era SOAD was one of those rare moments where peculiar, intelligent, bracing music with a conscience gained wide acceptance from kids who thought they'd found saviours.
Often, it instantly goes wrong. People settle for what they've got and as such become a massive disappointment within the space of one mere record. For this troupe it wasn't so much an instantaneous freefall as what has become something of an unfortunate slide in to caricature, one that continues with 'Hypnotize'. They've not hit the bottom yet. In fact, who's to say they won't plateau out, or pick up their game again? But currently what they're doing, they've done, done better, and done very recently.
A partner album to the recent 'Mesmerize', this second instalment doesn't take off where the other left so much as cover the same ground. It's as if neither record is the half of the story it's meant to be, rather each does half the job in twice the necessary time. Being intelligent people, they've made a good record, one which still has the ability to surprise and generate a smirk regularly. But it's almost as if they sound overworked, tired, not lacking ideas but simply a little fed up of having to think up new ones.
Focus on the brighter things, as you always should if you don't want to die a lonely, miserable bastard. 'Attack' might be exactly how someone studying a handbook of 'How to Write the First Track on a SOAD Album' would go about the task, but they'd have followed the rules so closely that you couldn't give them anything less than full marks. And heck, who doesn't love hearing someone play opera quite so bloody fast as they do on 'Dreaming'? When they slow down and pay attention to what they're making they hit their peaks, the title track being the song crafted with the most attention to detail of anything here. Elsewhere, it flits between the mundane and the uncomfortable, either indulging in less exhilarating visits to previously covered turf such as the likes of 'Tentative', rubbish power balladry of 'Holy Mountains' or the pointless sloganeering of 'Kill Rock 'N Roll', where, for the first time, they begin to sound a little old.
Often, it runs in to problems lyrically, either by trying to sound funny, not mastering what they wanted to say or, having not mastered what they want to say, trying to sound funny instead. Take 'Vicinity of Obscenity' for example, which would be great if they'd bothered to write words for it other than 'Banana banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie!'. Imagine they're singing something else and it's a lot of fun. It's a tactic that can't save the lyrically wanting 'She's Like Heroin' however, and please, someone tell them there's no such phrase as 'most loneliest' ('Lonely Day').
Once the heavy rock pioneers you could attribute a little credibility to, the rehashed pomp of 'Hypnotize' makes finding that state of mind again difficult. Now, albeit peppered with moments of greatness, they spend too many minutes taking the easy way out - self-parody. For the ones you had taken so seriously, that's scary stuff.
Artists in this article: System Of A Down
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