Talk about putting on a show! Wow, System of a Down did just that on December 10th 2005 at The Gibson Amphitheater or better known as The Universal Amphitheater. I have been to many of Systems concerts but this show was something to remember. They started out their set with “Attack” a new hit from their recently released album Hypnotize and from then on it was just a blur.

System of a Down rocked the audience with a whopping hour and a half set playing a combination of songs from Hypnotize, Mezmerize, Toxicity, Steal this Album and System of a Down. I could say one thing for sure; there was a lot of brotherly love and respect on stage between Serj, Daron, John and Shavo on this night. The fans were going wild as well as SOAD.

System of a Down remade hard rock in its own confounding image but still draws inspiration from the unglamorous streets of Hollywood.

This is how the beginning ends: right here on the unglamorous streets of east Hollywood, the land of no film stars, at a seedy motel in Little Armenia. The band System of a Down is about to begin passing from one world and into another, and hardly anyone seems to realize what is happening.

It’s just business as usual for a rising quartet of rockers known mainly to a young cult of metal fanatics always hungry for more, more, more. The band has returned to the old neighborhood to make a music video for a new tune, “Chop Suey,” a frantic, apocalyptic meditation on drugs and confusion, of jangly acoustic guitars and speed-metal riffs and epic non sequiturs. The September 2001 release date of the group’s sophomore album, Toxicity, is still weeks away, but some tracks are already crowding the Internet. Something is brewing.

Kerrang magazine got another interesting interview with troubles genius behind System of a Down 'Daron Malakian'

You Seem to have Invested a lot more of your emotions into 'Mezmerize' and 'Hypnotize' than you have in the past.
"I don't see that so much because I've always written lyrics for System of A Down - I've always given a lot of my emotion and a lot of myself and my life to the band.
These Songs do rely on emotion, though that's where I'd like to head towards in the future. I don't want songs to depend on chunky riffs; I want them all to be more emotional"

System of a Down has made chart history, becoming the first band to debut two different studio albums at number one in the Billboard chart in the same calendar year. Holding back former chart-topper Kenny Chesney, the L.A.-based outfit's Hypnotize was the biggest selling album of last week, moving 320,000 first-week copies, according to SoundScan.

Only two other acts have accomplished such a two-fer since the inception of the Billboard chart in 1983. The Beatles landed the compilation albums Anthology 2 and Anthology 3 on top in 1996 and rapper DMX accomplished the feat in 1998 with his first two solo albums, It's Dark and Hell Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, but SOAD is the first band to achieve the mark with studio albums.

Hypnotize is the second installment in System's song cycle that began with May's Mesmerize. That disc opened at number one with a more robust 453,000 copies. With a boost from the Hypnotize release hype last week, Mezmerize sold 20,000 more, climbing 21 spots to 97; it has now moved 1.5 million copies.

'Hypnotize': All the Surprises You Expect!
Before Armenian American art-metal heroes System of a Down hit big with "Mezmerize" last May, political hard-rock albums were usually pretty insufferable, filled with dated rhetoric about the New World Order (we're looking at you, Rage Against the Machine) or formless railings against the Man (everyone else). "Mezmerize" was a revelation, settling the question of what Noam Chomsky would sound like if he fronted a faster, lumpier version of Primus.

System might not have had much new to say about the war in Iraq (the band's against it, in case you were wondering), but it has an absurdist streak to rival Captain Beefheart's and an unerring instinct for the jugular, and never before have such competing instincts been put to such good use.

System of a Down is a heavy-metal band that can do fury and aggression with the best of them. And yet here is Daron Malakian, the chief architect of the group's sound, shuffling into the 1st Mariner Arena dressing room, shoulders slumped, face drooping, eyes averted, as if he's the most timid person in the building, if not the entire Inner Harbor. He nods at a visitor, then meekly extends his arm and offers a totally un -rock-and-roll handshake, a sort of dead fish with fingers.


His assistant appears more self-assured than Malakian does. So do the System roadies, the band's personal chef, Malakian's leggy fashion-model girlfriend, the tour-bus driver -- even the woman selling hot dogs at a concession stand upstairs on the fan-filled concourse, where the hair is long, the testosterone is thick and the dress code calls for black T-shirts celebrating this god of thunder (Iron Maiden) or that one (Metallica).