jeff_wilder78's Full Review: System of a Down [Edited] by System of a Down
System Of A Down is one metal band that isn't afraid to be something other than loud. Their music is aggressive, yet it's not loaded end to end with "I hate my mom" cliches. The fact that they came out in the midst of the so-called Nu-Metal explosion caused some people to write them off. However, they have since gone on to even greater success than before and I still have no reason to regret buying their self-titled debut album in mid-2000.
What I liked about System at the time (and still do) was the fact that they offered good aggressive metal with real lyrics and personality, in the wake of bland noise like Slipknot. None of that "My life sucks/My dad won't raise my allowance" crap here. No, System Of A Down's lyrics are delivered in rapid, stream-of-conscious style, the type that hasn't been seen that often in music since Bob Dylan's heyday. And many of the lyrics are also inventive as well. Musically, System Of A Down will often switch tempos three times throughout a song.
The song that first brought System Of A Down to the general publics attention was "Sugar". The song opens with a pounding drumbeat and heavy tempo over which singer Serj Tankian bellows "The Kombucha mushroom people/Sitting around all day/Who can believe you/Who can believe you/Let your mother pray/Sugar!” But the song changes tempos from a heavy metal roar to a rather bouncy one over which Tankian sings "I play Russian Roulette every day/It's a mans sport/With a bullet called life".
The album opens with the song "Suite-Pee". The song starts with guitarist Daron Malakian playing an Eddie Van Halenesque neck-tapped guitar riff. The song moves from fast to slow tempos. The way Tankian sings the line "I wanna f*** my way to the garden/Cause everybody needs a motherf***er!" makes it sound outright hilarious. This before the pounding drumbeat kicks in and Tankian concludes the song by singing "the falling of Christ" repeatedly.
"Know" features Tankian singing in that aforementioned stream-of-consciousness style I referred to earlier. Lines like "Sheep that ran off from the herd" and "Do you ever try to fly/Have you ever wanted to die" make it sound great when actually listened to. In other words, just reading about it won't do it justice.
The tempo on "Suggestions" sounds like one that Helmet might have used. The lyrics show off that humorous side with lines like "Warning/Post hypnotic suggestions/Running the ships ashore/The Orange light that follows/Will soon proclaim itself a god". There is a part in the song where Tankian does a pretty accurate Speedy Gonzales imitation.
"Spiders" is a slow song that proves that Tankian can actually sing. The slow tempo lasts for only a few minutes though before the heaviness kicks in. Tankian starts off by singing "The piercing radiant bloom/The storming of poor June". Once the heaviness starts he sings in an angry tone "Your lives are open wide/The v-chip gives them sight/All the life running through her hair".
"DDevil" is another bouncy/extremely heavy number with lyrics like "People shake their spears at Shakespeare".
"Soil" is a fast angry song with lyrics that seem to be about mind control of some sort. Tankian shouts, "Don't you realize/Evil/lives in the skin".
"War?" starts with a Rage Against The Machine type guitar riff before shifting into a stop/start tempo like rocker. The ongoing chorus of "We will fight the heathens" suggests that the song is an attack on organized religion and a comment in the liner notes (right below the song lyrics) bears this out.
"Mind" is one of only a few missteps on the album. The song is good musically. But the lyrics get too repetitive.
Regarding "Peephole" I'd recommend referring back to my final sentence on "Know".
"Cubert" is a good, short, almost punkish number that manages to escape sounding too repetitive by being short at 1:48.
"P L U C K" begins with a crunchingly heavy guitar riff before a minute-length opening of furious screaming begins. The song itself is about genocide. In fact, I'd suspect that it's about the way the Turks massacred millions of innocent Armenians in 1915 (the members of System are Armenian in case you didn't know). "Darts" meanwhile is a thrashy rocker that sounds good musically, yet is too repetitive to fully enjoy. The second of only two missteps on the album.
The only real caveat I feel compelled to offer about System of A Down is the fact that listening to an album of theirs can wear you out. But the worn out feeling it leaves you with is a good one, unlike the pounding headache that a Slipknot album leaves. If you're looking for inventive, well-played metal with politically charged, humorous lyrics, pick up a copy of System Of A Down. Also check out their sophomore album Toxicity. It's some of the best heavy music to come out of the heavy metal wasteland that is the music scene today.
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