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SOADFans: 9:30 Club LIVE EVENT REVIEW |
Posted by JP on Thursday, May 12, 2005 - 09:18 PM
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SYSTEM OF A DOWN
9:30 Club
Washington, DC
May 11, 2005<IMG alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" src="http://img77.echo.cx/img77/9352/soadband2uu.jpg" width=536 border=0>
<SPAN class=pn-normal>People love a novelty. It arrives and you marvel at the newness with all the wonder of a chick on the day of its hatching. “Genius!” you scream but nearly as soon as the thought of a further accolade begins to form you realize that you have already started down the path to loathing. It is simply the nature of the novelty to take the sweet to sour within a single attention span. System Of A Down exists as an example of a group that was once mistaken for a novelty but is finally and righteously revealing itself as a legitimate sonic pioneer.
What groups like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Tool were to their generation System Of A Down will likely be to theirs and the best evidence for the claim came last night at the 9:30 Club where SOAD debuted tracks from their new album “Mezmerize” in a live set for a select club audience.
Despite guitarist Daron Malakian’s slightly dialed back performance, (reportedly due to a virus), SOAD was it’s usual manic preaching self while blending fist pumping politics and progressive Heavy Metal into a fine mash that was rabidly devoured by the overflow crowd. Bodies only left the club’s main floor by bouncer led ejection or fatigue induced unconsciousness and when floor space did appear the scramble to fill it was near riotous. The music was beyond rapturous and the performers near messianic. If Rock and Roll needed saving, (it did), salvation was obviously at hand.
The set was wonderfully crafted from the old, the new and the obscure into 90 minutes of lightly controlled mayhem with the group’s biggest hit, “Chop Suey,” causing a sway so fierce the barricade was literally lifted from the floor and thrown a good measure forward. Though the set featured a healthy dose of “Toxicity” era material the night was really all about introducing the new record and what was played from it couldn’t have been better received. Occasionally the room would slow its revolution just enough to get a handle on the new music but in each case by song’s end everyone had fallen completely for it. Look for “B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bombs)”and perhaps “Cigaro” to deliver another platinum album to SOAD and years of unending play time in whatever contraption they come up with to play music on next.
At the end of it all “Toxicity” and “Suite Pee” were used to drive the nail the rest of the way home and SOAD left an exhausted crowd to stumble off into the night, a perfect end to a perfect evening.
SOAD is many things to many people but one thing that they will never be mistaken for again is a novelty act.
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<SPAN class=pn-title><FONT size=2>System of a Down Leveled 9:30 Club
<IMG height=252 src="http://img79.echo.cx/img79/1524/20050512soadcrowd3ot.jpg" width=358 border=0> <TABLE id=table1 style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse" width="100%" border=0> | <SPAN class=pn-title><SPAN class=pn-normal>Everyone outside the show had a story -- one guy waited in line for four hours to get tickets, another eight, a third was said to have taken his place at 5:30 the previous afternoon. After all, it's not everyday that System of a Down plays a show at the 9:30 Club, much less is there any better time to prove your dedication to the band than by standing in line to buy tickets that only went on sale the day of the show -- no weeks of notice, no Ticketmaster, just standing in line.
The excitement was understandable -- this was to be one of SOAD's first shows in almost three years, part of a "Guerilla Tour" which featured surprise shows at intimate venues around the country. Washington was one of just ten cities chosen for the band's performance, the last before they set off to Europe until late June. For a band most often featured as a headliner in large arenas, and with their highly-anticipated fourth album due in stores next week, an eager crowd was to be expected -- and that eager crowd appeared, filling the club to capacity. | <IMG height=245 src="http://img79.echo.cx/img79/4029/20050512daron23lk.jpg" width=153 border=0> | <SPAN class=pn-title><SPAN class=pn-normal>Anticipation mounted in the minutes until the band took the stage, tearing straight into the politically-charged anti-war anthem "B.Y.O.B. [Bring Your Own Bombs]," the first of two singles released from their upcoming album "Mesmerize." As this DCist ran to an fro in the small aisle dividing the stage from the audience taking pictures, security guards stood over a crowd pushing, pulling, and pulsating with the music. Guitarist Daron Malakian, pictured at left, seemed oblivious to the frenetic pace of the music he and his bandmates were playing, mildly bobbing his head and staring into the darkness of the venue as he led the band's charge. Strange as this seemed, Malakian seemed completely possessed by his craft, aware enough of the impact the music was having yet unwilling to sacrifice his somber intensity.
SOAD didn't stop once for the next hour, moving straight through a set-list that included songs from their self-titled 1998 debut ("Suggestions," "Suite-Pee," "Spiders," "War?," "Sugar"), 2001's highly-acclaimed "Toxicity" ("Science," "Psycho," "Chop Suey," "Needles," "Deer Dance," "Aerials," "Bounce," "Forest," "Prison Song," "Atwa"), and 2002's b-sides compilation "Steal This Album!" ("Mr. Jack"). The band sounded tight and disciplined, and their music and energy benefited from an intimacy that they just won't get in 10,000-seat arenas. | <IMG height=230 src="http://img8.echo.cx/img8/9543/20050512serj9ba.jpg" width=122 border=0> | <SPAN class=pn-title><SPAN class=pn-normal>Both surprising and relieving was that the band -- whose music is often heavily influenced by politics -- did not resort to preaching to the audience. All too often bands whose music expresses protest of some sort tend to assume that a District-based venue equates with an audience whose opinion on all things political will be that much sharper than audiences anywhere else in the country. SOAD's message is best expressed in their music and activism -- the video for the anti-war song "Boom!," directed by Michael Moore, includes footage of the band marching alongside anti-war protestors, and SOAD has long advocated for an official recognition of the Turkish-sponsored genocide that killed 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 -- and is best left that way. Much more powerful than hearing the band explicitly state an opinion on any issue was singer Serj Tankian's powerful voice and cutting lyrics. During "War?" Tankian, pictured at right, figuratively sang of waging godly wars, while in "Prison Song" he dismissed the country's prison-industrial complex and questioned the government's desperation to lock up non-violent drug offenders. It was "B.Y.O.B," though, whose lyrics may have best, if not simply, questioned the use of war in U.S. foreign policy:
"Why don’t presidents fight the war?"
"Why do they always send the poor?"
SOAD's music has a love it or hate it quality to it -- it may be constant dissonance of speed metal juxtaposed against Middle Eastern breakdowns and themes, it may be the frenetic pace of the singing. one prominent SOAD hater is Oasis' Noel Gallagher, who once proclaimed:
"After I heard System of a Down, I thought, I’m actually alive to hear the shittiest band ever. Of all the bands that have gone before and all the bands that’ll be in the future, I was around when the worst was around."
But for fans of heavy music, it is the inability to define what SOAD's music is -- heavy metal? Nü metal? -- that makes them stand out in a genre so often packed with bands following the trend of the day. The New York Times today classified SOAD as "hyper-quirky Armenian-American protest-metal," a wordy yet accurate description of a band that tests the limits of traditional metal.
As the band wrapped up "Sugar" and left the stage, the crowd chanted for an encore -- but none came. The house lights came on, and 1,200 fans slowly filed towards the exits. Most were covered in sweat, some had lost shirts, others shoes. Almost all had given up school or work to wait in line for tickets. But to see a band like SOAD in a club as small as is 9:30, well, it seemed worth the sacrifices.
Source: www.dcist.com
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