System of a Down

Artist Rating: 88%

Peak Album Score: 23

Average Album Score: 22

Development Score: 7

- The pop-edged song craft of Mezmerize/Hypnotize is totally off the map on the group's messy (but fun) debut; they went a long way.

Originality Score: 9

- Although it's easy to write off metal bands as innately derivative and useless, these guys are very far from it. The riffs and melodies are absolutely manic, the lyrics range from straight-faced politics to non-sensical hilarity, and everything is lightly salted with Armenian folk music.

Personal Bias Score: 26

- This is, perhaps, the only group I'm reviewing to which I have an actual bias: System of a Down were my first musical love. But I don't feel that I treat them too subjectively; amidst humor, memorable choruses, actual world music influences, creative melodies, and great harmonies, there's a good deal to like about this band if you can get past the fact that it's metal music.

System of a Down (1998) - 93%
System of a Down's debut is absolutely unlike anything else I've ever heard, and though in my years of serious fandom I never thought I'd say this, more spirited and thus better than everything else that was to come. The conservatively-lengthed album (forty minutes in 1998!) is sprinkled with two-and-a-half minute songs that somehow manage each to be stuffed with odd and inventive musical thoughts. They're pop songs, in a way... but I don't mean that in the same sense as I do about "All My Loving"... or maybe I do. Take the 'hit single', "Sugar": the song flies right into the chorus - a loud, bashing thing with Serj growling some nonsense - but then gives way to a heavily swung jazz groove with a cute guitar melody on top (echoed by "sugaaaaaaah"), leading into the verse, an absolutely manic rant of nonsense over the same groove, and subsequently the chorus again. After another round, the band changes gears completely, and goes into this furious coda section with a completely new riff, feel, rhythm and vocal style... but somehow it all works! Some of the album's most entertaining moments come at its weirdest - "Peephole" verges on carnival music, "Know" has some seriously tribal elements, and the long instrumental coda of "Soil" makes me want to get up and dance a traditional Armenian dance (because I can, obviously) - but ultimately the best song is the slow, somber one (I hesitate to call it a ballad); and between "War?", "Darts" and "Ddevil" I've had perhaps the most terrifying musical experience I ever will. The standout, then, is the least manic - "Spiders" is full of energy, has some nice harmonies, a couple great melodies, and a really great hook in the crescendo to the chorus ("Dreams are made winding through my head"). Overall, though, System of a Down is an experience, a dark, terrifying, and occasionally inconsistent one, but an engaging journey nonetheless.

- Highlights: "Know", "Spiders", "Soil", "Peephole"

Toxicity (2001) - 93%
On their second outing, System of a Down prove once and for all that they're actually a terrorist organization bent on destroying Western society. The signs are obvious: "Toxicity" denounces the vileness of Western cities, "Science" proclaims faith as the only true touchstone of human spirit, "Chop Suey!" rings of Islamicist martyrdom (yeah, yeah, don't keep telling me they're Armenian Christians), "Deer Dance" accuses the US of being violent abusers of the innocent at heart, "Prison Song" accuses it of actually being a totalitarian regime, "Jet Pilot" proves that the band knew about 9/11 before it happened, and "X" essentially states the band's problem with the world ("We don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply...") and their proposed solution ("Die!"). Thankfully, all of the above-mentioned songs are also really fucking good (except "X", which is a little repetitious, and "Chop Suey!", which shows the band's lamentable tendency to stick beautiful choruses alongside really clunky verses), and loaded with great vocal and instrumental hooks (many of which are percussion-driven - it would be well to note that John Dolmayan's remarkably melodic drumming makes its first real appearances here). The best of the lot, though, are "Forest", a dark headbanger with wonderful guitar parts culminating in a rockin' instrumental break, and the closing "Aerials", which may be the group's most anthemic song ever (and man, is that chorus haunting).

- Highlights: "Deer Dance", "Forest", "Science", "Toxicity", "Aerials"

Steal this Album! (2002) - 91%
Although it's a compilation of Toxicity outtakes, Steal this Album! manages to almost match its immediate predecessor. Though bogged down by somewhat hokey pieces of humor (the somewhat clumsy "Pictures" and scatterbrained "Fuck the System") and humorless political diatribes (the practically melodyless "Boom!" and the plodding "Thetawaves", which actually isn't humorless, but it seemed to me to fit in this parenthetical), the album is just as stocked with wonderfully original works as the 'main' album of these sessions. Oddly enough, very few of the songs here sound like they would fit on Toxicity at all; they're all either too melodic (and thus pointing towards the group's next effort) or too manic (and thus pointing backwards to the group's debut) to fit between the restrained-but-tuneful heaviness of "Toxicity" and "Science". In the former category are the lovely "Roulette", a straight-faced acoustic love ballad with great harmonies and string parts, and "Ego Brain", a near-psychedelic rocker with a strong chorus and cool twangy guitar tone. In the latter are the ever-changing "Streamline", at once a 5/4 heavy rocker, a great ballad, and an epic guitar instrumental, and "Mr. Jack", a tune jumping back and forth between heavy and ominous, ending in a 6/8 (the rest is 4/4) outburst of yelling reminiscent of the end of "Sugar". In between is the awesome "Highway Song", maybe the group's most normal heavy rocker, but not for the worse; Serj delivers a bunch of really nice melodies, and the closing section of the song is one of the group's most effective ("The purest forms of life; our days are never coming back/The cannons of our time; our days are never coming back")

- Highlights: "Inner Vision", "Highway Song", "Ego Brain", "Roulette", "Streamline"

Mezmerize/Hypnotize (2005) - 90%
After a little break, System of a Down came crashing back onto the scene with the intention to craft a heavy, quirky, melodic magnum opus. While a handful of filler and some really dumb verse melodies stuck in otherwise great songs prevent Mezmerize/Hypnotize from seriously challenging Toxicity or System of a Down, the band's work here finds its merit in diversity, clarity and melody.  "Radio/Video" shows the group fully embracing Balkan folk music, with an accordion prominently featured alongside metal guitar, and a really awesome instrumental break with a really wonderful Eastern-flavored guitar solo and some lovable "la la"s. "Question!" follows in the 5/4 steps of "Streamline" and manages to be even more interesting and more bombastic; the subtle, winding verse melody alternates between 5/8 and 6/8 without sounding forced, and the 6/8 chorus is one of the group's best (and man, that guitar-led bridge section is good). "Lost in Hollywood" fulfills, in turn, the promise of "Roulette", as a highly restrained acoustic epic with wonderful harmonies. Daron takes his first lead vocal here, and does a fantastic job (it helps that the melodies are very pretty). "Dreaming" something of a revival of the band's original sound, with an incredibly hectic verse (three melodies going at once, and two of them finishing a tritone apart - awesome.), an epic, harmonized chorus, and a pretty Daron-sung bridge. As I said, some otherwise great songs are held back by some really stupid verse melodies (the stunningly neo-Romantic "Revenga", and the strangely poppy "Violent Pornography"), but even those manage to be highly enjoyable. "Tentative", "Holy Mountains" and the closing "Soldier Side" are all anti-war anthems of high quality, but otherwise completely different. "Tentative" manages to be one of the group's best angry riff-rockers, best epic arena rockers, and best ballads all at once; "Holy Mountains" may be uncomfortably reminiscent of "Aerials", but it in no way falls short - this one manages to be more powerful (if less subtle) and poignant, basing itself on an Armenian folk melody and written in tribute to the Armenian Genocide; "Soldier Side" (reprising the opening "Soldier Side - Intro", itself perhaps the best opening statement this album could have) is one of the best metal requiems imaginable, with lovely melodies and harmonies underpinned by a speedy hi-hat beat (echoed in the chorus by a rapid sequence of thirds on guitar in the chorus), and concluded by the same melody that opened the whole album. Wunderbar!

- Highlights: "Radio/Video", "Question!", "Sad Statue", "Lost in Hollywood", "Dreaming", "Stealing Society", "Tentative", "Holy Mountains", "Soldier Side"