Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

System of a Down remember their Armenian heritage

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • System of a Down remember their Armenian heritage

    System of a Down
    Dan Silver at the Astoria, WC2

    The Times
    April 6, 2005

    SYSTEM OF A DOWN are not your run-of-the-mill metal band. As
    head-scratchingly eccentric as they are heart-poundingly extreme, the
    Californian-based quartet's unique sound incorporates seemingly
    disparate influences including Scandinavian black metal and the
    traditional music of the band members' Armenian ancestral homeland
    into a cohesive - if cacophonous - whole. Their lyrics, meanwhile,
    veer wildly from the obliquely personal to the overtly political -
    usually within the space of the same song, and sometimes even the
    same line.

    The band have clearly struck a chord, though; the combined sales of
    their first three albums come in just shy of the 10 million mark, and
    they've already sold out three summer shows at the Brixton Academy.
    Either side of those dates are two headlining appearances that
    demonstrate the dichotomy at the band's heart: one will close
    Donington's Download festival and the other Souls 2005, a Los
    Angeles charity gig commemorating the 90th anniversary of the
    Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First
    World War.

    They also have two new albums, entitled Mezmerize and Hypnotize, due
    to be released, Kill Bill style, six months apart, although only a
    couple of compositions received an early airing at this white-hot
    warm-up show. Perhaps inevitably they were informed by recent events
    in the Middle East - the guitarist Daron Malakian has relatives in
    the region - with particular scorn reserved for George W. Bush. BYOB
    equated the invasion of Iraq to an apocalyptic party, the singer Serj
    Tankian describing the Allied troops "dancing in the desert, blowing
    up the sunshine", before angrily asking, "Why don't the presidents
    fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?"

    The soundtrack to that scathing commentary was a testing torrent of
    thrashing riffs interspersed with snatches of melody, and therein
    lies a problem that has dogged System of a Down from day one. While
    they have plenty of worth to say, the message is often missed amid
    the maelstrom.

    Elsewhere, Roulette saw Tankian and Malakian harmonising exquisitely
    over delicately picked folk guitar, Bounce, a hyperactive paean to
    pogoing, provoked the desired response from the fans. It all made for
    a compelling - if challenging - performance.
Working...
X