SYSTEM OF A DOWN

System of a down are supposedly four Armenian guys, who have been living in Los Angeles for a lifetime. They are grown up men, which already sets them aside from the Limp Roach Park-posse around the corner, and the sweat a lot when they rock. And rock they do. More metal than most other rockbands who are fab at the moment and possibly more mental than all of them.

Imagine your first listen. System of a Down start their second album with a crazy, weird highspeed-rocker about the evils of the American prison system, which is a privatised business and a very profitable one indeed. The song has strange breaks, a weird melody, but one that will catch you after a few listenings, when you have understood how it works. Or be reminded of Mr. Bungle. You check out the cover. The name of the band is billboarded on a hill and you will instantly recognize the iconography of the “Hollywood”-sign in Los Angeles. This is where you will realize, that these four guys aren’t very satisfied with the way things are going in their home-country. Because, even though they might be from Armenia originally, the USA are centre and core of their lives. First, I don’t think you can buy decent amplifiers and backlines for a metal-band in Armenia, and secondly, no matter what, they are an American band. There might be a few sparks of Armenian folklore here and there on the record, but they might remind the regular metalhead more of Sepultura than any kind of folklore-world-music. But we are still in the first song. Up to the second verse you’ve heard death-metal-screams, Slayer-like raps, funky chingaling and some real singing, diverse grooves and a heavy guitar-chugga like Korn. Be prepared, it will go on like that.

The kids won’t know, what they have with System of a Down. But since most of them are too young to have lived up to Fantomas, that is okay. The only thing all the songs have in common, are their complex, surprising structures which will fit a streetpunk-chorus to a New Metal-Riff or let a song end on beautiful, medieval guitar chords which were used only by Eighties-Metal-Bands. Or using a flow of words like “Psycho Groupie Cocaine Crazy” as a refrain.

But the music is only on side of this record. The other side is an overt political stance, that now – after Tuesday 11^th of September and the ongoing war against Afghanistan – has become new actuality and meaning. Take the lines from a song like “Deer dance” where it goes: “Beyond the staples center you can see America / with its tired, poor, avenging disgrace … pushing little children with their fully automatics / they like to push the weak around”. Okay, that song might have been written with the LA-riots in mind, but there is the sense of the almighty state which likes to show its muscles every now and then. The song “Shimmy” is about the way people are forced into living in a certain way. The Godfathers called that “Birth, School, Work, Death” years ago. In the eyes of SoaD a regular life is a stupid dance between the forces that be and the little gratifications you get. More songs deal with personal problems and identity crisis like “Chop Suey” (aforementioned hitsingle) and some others. There is a lot in here. SoaD can’t resist to put at least a little symbolism into everything they do. E.g. the water-up-to-our-noses-foto in the inlay.