System Of A Down have overcome all of the odds to become on of the world's biggest bands and they’ve done it on their own terms. Terry Bezer asks them what it's like to be the freak amongst the rock hierarchy.

"We're the biggest little band in the world!" Laughs System drummer John Dolmayan, contemplating the overwhelming triumphs his band have enjoyed over the last seven years. "We have absolutely no right to be selling as many records as we are or playing to as many people as we do when you look at all of the other big bands, but we still do. I guess it's kind of refreshing to be the guys that shouldn't be there but are!"

It’s more than a little hard to believe just how much success System have enjoyed since rising from the Los Angeles unsigned scene seven years ago.

When the boys first arrived in this country to play club shows as support to metal-heavyweights Slayer and Sepultura, even if their impact was immediate and critical acclaim was heavy, you’d never have tipped the band to go on to be multi-million sellers. It was their musical equivalent of something akin to Peter Jackson’s blood-soaked laughathon Braindead being a box-office smash. With a drummer wearing a gas mask, a guitarist painted silver and a singer dressed like what can only described as an evil rabbi, System Of A Down’ image wasn’t the only thing not to be associated with your typical rock superstars. Their sound was that of a thousand neon fireworks going off in the clear night sky of a war-torn battlefield; a refreshing mix of crazy beats and time signatures with Armenian flavors thrown in for good measure and superb vocal melodies that wrap themselves around your brain like a coiling cobra. While tracks from the bands debut album such as Sugar and Suite-Pee may have been massive hits in metal clubs across the world, it’s fair to say that you couldn’t imagine them being played to over 60,000 people during a headline set at Donnington but that’s exactly what happened in 2005 when the band closed the entire Download festival.

Following in the footsteps of their breakthrough self-titled debut album came the album that broke them from being big in the metal world, to being hug in the rock mainstream. That album is Toxicity, a politically charged masterpiece that was at the number on slot on the Billboard chart the same week that America was shocked to it’s foundations on September 11th, 2001. It’s lead single has become one of this decade’s biggest anthems and proved to be just the slightest appetizer of the turbo-charged album that would follow. From the booming ambience of ATWA to the hypnotic leanings of Aerials, the chugging melodies of Prison Song to the musical equivalent of taking acid that is Needles, System had created not only an album that was unique in its sound, approach and delivery but struck a chord with the entire world. In a time where music was high on hype but low on substance, here was a band willing to stand up and yell ‘Fuck you!’ by delivering an album that could be experimental, original, weird and wonderful and still shift millions of records across the world.

Since the initial breakthrough there has been no holding back the Armenian fruit-loops, as they have become a band of arena status and deservingly become one of rock music’s household names. Their name is also one that has become synonymous with making you expect the unexpected and taking as many musical genre’s as you can poke a multi-coloured stick at and fusing them all together into an apocalyptic hybrid that forms the sound of one of the biggest bands in the world.

This year, System have released a double album spread out into two parts: Mezmerize and Hypnotize. The first part is a primitive, angry attack which marks their most unrelenting release to date, bludgeoning the listener with non-stop punches to the face from start to finish. Lead single BYOB is a skull-fuck of a song, taking an innocent almost child-like chorus and placing it amongst the sort of rocket-fuelled madness we’ve come to expect from System while the electronic flavourings shown on Old School Hollywood mark yet another first for the band. The second of these two albums is a far more shaded affair with lead single and title-track Hypnotize showing the sort of ambience that the album occasionally lends itself to.

“It’s funny you should say it’s a bit calmer because the last person I spoke to said that they thought it was heavier than the last album!” Laughs Daron Malakian, the guitarist and chief-songwriter for System. “I guess that’s the beauty of what we do. There are a lot of different things going on, on this second part and the first part of this record. I guess everyone just takes from it what they take from it. It’s a lot of fun being in a band that doesn’t have to premeditate what it’s going to do or anything like that at all. We’ll just do what we do and if people carry on liking it as much as they have up until this point then that’ll be great.”

“Being a drummer in this band is every drummers dream.’ Says John, salivating over his day-job. ‘Daron’s such a great and interesting writer and he experiments so much that you have to do the same on your kit. I get to play so many different styles in this band whether it’s rock or polka or jazz or metal, they all fit in and they all go hand in hand with his writing. It’s a dream come true because you can never ever get bored or stuck in a rut with your drumming playing in a band like this.”

That System Of A Down hit the big time making such brutal, odd-ball music is a testament to a band that have forged a successful career thus far out of being the unique freak of the metal scene. It’s not all been plain sailing recently though. Amongst all of their praise and adulation that this band have received, there is the quiet murmuring that System are becoming a self-parody. The accusations seem to be being aimed that there are parts of their songs that are thought-out to try and surprise and shock the listener and therefore diluting the natural affect that this would have. Is there a case for saying that there is too much method slowly but surely creeping into System’s collective madness? And just how long can a band go on when their success is routed on the ability to do something original and continually surprise the listener with fresh and exciting sounds?

“To us, our music’s not as weird or crazy as it sounds to everyone else.’ Says Daron Malakian, guitarist and chief songwriter in System Of A Down ‘I just try and write naturally and never to shock and surprise like people may think. I guess to a lot of people may not expect the sudden time changes or the little guitar, bass or vocal sections that we include in our songs but they’re not intentionally out to shock people. They’re there just because that’s how I write. There’s nothing more complicated to it than that. I just naturally write this way and that so many people have liked it so much and have bought our albums is very flattering.”

Has there ever been a time when you’ve thought to yourself ‘Maybe that’s a little bit too ‘out there” and people won’t understand what we’re trying to do?

“That’s just it. We’re not trying to do anything!’ Daron retorts. ‘We make the music that becomes System Of A Down and that’s pretty much it. There’s nothing pre-thought out and we don’t think too much when we put together a song. We just go into a room and play and what comes out of us is what you’ll hear on the album. Writing songs is something I enjoy doing and I don’t think to myself ‘This song should sound this way’. I just wait until I’ve wrote the song and then it is what it is. A System Of A Down song. If people like it then that’s great, if not then that’s cool also.”

“I always have total faith in Daron.’ Says Dolmayan, backing up his bandmate. “He’s always so inspired and he’ll do things that the average songwriter wouldn’t even begin to be able to think about. He’s a genius and when it comes to putting together any future System Of A Down album, there’s not the slightest doubt that’s what he does and we do as a band. We definitely don’t feel like we’re going stale or anything like that.”

Headlining festivals, gaining platinum albums and having the right to be called true originals. Just another day in the life of the world’s biggest little band.

They also reviewed Hypnotize in this issue.....


SYSTEM OF A DOWN
Hypnotize
00000 (4 out of 5)
Columbia

System Of A Down's rise to stardom has been meteoric to say the very least. The critic's love them, they've sold millions of albums around the world and they're respected in just about every field of music you can think of, but with the release of the first part of their double opus Mezmerize, for the very first time cracks have began to surface. The record was solid but after two landmark albums, it seemed a little unspectacular.

So all eyes are on the band to turn in a far more impressive second part and, like it's first, it does deliver in parts. Attack is a stunning opener with blast beats being introduced for the first time in System's career and all of the trademark lunacy you can expect from a System release. The title-track is a swaying, brooding piece with almost trance like ambience being exuded from all orifices and Vicinity has a claim to be the most mad-cap song in System's repertoire.

In other areas, System stray in the world of self-parody. She's Like Heroin in just System by numbers, Lonely Day is almost too basic for it's own good and consequently becomes a little on the boring side and while throughout the album, there is the subtlest of hints that you may have heard the whole whacka-whacka, crazy paranoia motif that System have done so well up to this point, one too many times.

This is not a bad album by any means. It lacks the impact of the debut System record and it lacks the star quality of Toxicity but, like Mezmerize before it, it's still a fairly decent album in its own right. It has moments of genius and it also has moments where you'll find your concentration wandering elsewhere. It's simply a good album that fails to touch the greatness of the bands first two releases.

the big test is where System can go from here. the debut album was a fresh kick in the balls for a flagging metal scene and on Toxicity they perfected their sound. Mezmerize was a good album and so is this one but will System be able to enhance themselves in the future to maintain the critical plaudits of the average rock fan or will they remain a 'good' band not quite living up to what they have released previously. Time, as they say, will tell.TB

 

Originally by ZERO Magazine, Issue 5 January 06

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