12/31/2023 0 Comments System of a down hypnotizeIt’s a suitably epic close to twelve fantastic songs, and it’s a fantastic close to an incredible double album. It’s a familiar trick but when the songs in question are this good it works a treat. The pace gradually eases down, and the album comes full circle – the very end of Lonely Day echoes the build-up to B.Y.O.B., and the beautiful Soldier Side returns to the refrain that opened Mezmerize all those months ago. The final three songs of the album are all from the pen of guitarist Daron Malakian, the key architect of the Mezmerize/Hypnotize project. Only System could make it work, and it’s brilliant. The Gong-play-metal psychedelic goblin yelps of “banana-banana-banana-terracotta-pie!” dance manically into all manner of evil noises before diving into System’s poppiest chorus ever, which comes somewhere between the song from Different Strokes and a Jackson 5 take on the Hill Street Blues theme. Serj’s machine-gun “eat-em-eat-em-eat-em-eat-em’ on U-Fig and Daron yelling “ass!’ throughout She’s like Heroin are inspired moments of silliness, but they don’t even come close to Vicinity of Obscenity, probably System’s daftest song to date. If there’s less moments of utter absurdity, then those that remain are easily equal to previous oddities. I could point at U-Fig, Soldier Side or Holy Mountains as examples but it pervades and enhances the whole album. The influence of traditional Armenian music plays a stronger part than ever before – if anything it’s now a completely inseparable part of the System sound. Stealing Society is another insanely catchy punk anthem, surely a future gig favourite -with the second half of the song riding on a surf-punk wave that puts Green Day to shame whilst remaining determinedly SOAD.Ĭompared to Mezmerize, Hypnotize is certainly a bit more melancholy and less wacky overall, with many more serious moments amidst the madness. The furiously infectious punk blast of Kill Rock n’ Roll leads us to the single and title track which is almost like a pause for breath amidst the rest of the insanity on offer. Dreaming shifts things up yet another gear with a bonkers ‘if Handel did metal’ vocal arrangement and vintage System sing-a-long chorus. The machine-gun riff that launches Attack makes way for a suitably epic pattern of melancholy breaks and ferocious speed-metal. So – first impressions are that Hypnotize does have more of the classic (read pre-Mezmerize) SOAD sound to it. A minute is spent wondering whether you can still get the Mezmerize lyric book into its pocket (you can) before it’s time to step, with trepidation and excitement into the mad, mad world of Hypnotize. It all starts with the ritual of interlocking the two specially designed digi-packs together into one casing, which is hugely satisfying in itself. That’s a lot of pressure – and God only knows how they’ve done it, but System have delivered, and in doing so have given us one of the great rock double albums of all time. Either way, it has to be good enough to justify selling this as two albums, rather than one double – good enough to justify both the cost and the six month wait. Fans of Mezmerize will be wanting more of the same, others will be hoping for music that harkens back to the less eclectic metal assault of Toxicity. So this is it – the second half of System Of A Down‘s Mezmerize/Hypnotize double album (or ‘two album set’ as they call it) – and it’s got a hell of a lot to live up to.
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