The Daily Texan, TX
May 3 2005
Fighting the heathens
System of a Down passes through Austin, spouts poetic propaganda
By Austin Powell
There was no opening band. There were no real props or backgrounds.
An Armenian flag was held proudly by audience members as they chanted
the band’s name before it took the stage. At 9:17 p.m., the lights
went black.
The anticipation built. It was one of only 10 tour stops in the
United States for System of a Down and its first in Austin since
February 2002. Only a selected few have had the privilege to preview
tracks from their upcoming release, “Mesmerize.” The band has kept
the release of details regarding the album to a minimum in hopes of
avoiding another disaster like the one that led to the release of
the mockingly clever “Steal This Album.”
For months now, guitarist Daron Malakian has been in hiding. He
enslaves himself to the music he creates. In his solitary state, he
breeds insanity. Last Saturday night, it seemed as if he came out of
seclusion for the first time. The sold-out crowd lunged forward as
he launched into the Euro-death metal guitar intro for their latest
single, “BYOB.” As if he couldn’t remain silent for another second
longer, he let out a piercing high scream with “Why do they always
send the poor?”
This one song can sum up their entire performance. It is, in itself,
a contradiction. Juxtaposed with the wackiness of Serj Tankian’s
poetic propaganda is Malakian’s redundancy of half-truths conveyed
with the simplicity of sound bites. The thrashing snare drums are met
with a hard double bass that sounds like the soundtrack to guerilla
warfare movement.
Then it breaks; it shifts gears; it smiles at you. It makes you forget
your troubles with a dance-club hook that screams of commercialism. The
song bounces back again from relaxed to insane, driving home how easy
it is to get caught in ethnocentrism and consumerism before drilling
sounds of brutality and harsh, uncensored truths.
This same purposeful contradiction riddled System of a Down’s entire
show. While they played prophetic past hits such as “War?” and
“Suggestions,” the crowd danced to the self-explanatory pogo hit
“Bounce.” Between the social commentary of “Prison Song” and “Toxicity”
were moments of peace and tranquility in “Streamline” and “Roulette”
that had bassist Shavo Odajian on the ground smoking and singing along.
Adding to the many contradictions in performance was the appearance of
the band. Tankian and Malakian both were clean-shaven. Tankian donned
a pin-striped, button-down, long-sleeved shirt tucked into black jeans
that were held up with a large silver belt buckle. Malakian began
the night wearing a black vintage suit top. Not as noticeable was the
person who occasionally helped comb John Dolmayan’s hair from behind
his drum kit.
The songs, nevertheless, remained the same, if not louder and more
schizophrenic than ever. New tracks such as “Kill Rock ‘n’ Roll” and
“Holy Mountains” had the crowd so riled up that the band actually
had to turn on the house lights to ask people to stop pushing so hard
for fear they were going to break the barricades.
“Back off, back off! We don’t want people to get hurt. We want them
to get smart,” Malakian remarked during “Mr. Jack.” One song later,
during “Needles,” Malakian was on his back, crowd-surfing and playing
guitar, causing an onslaught of fans to push toward him.
A crazed fan actually managed to get on stage during “Suite-Pee” and
proceeded to bear-hug Tankian until he was pulled off by security. By
the end of the night, even the discotheque intro to “Sugar” seemed
normal.
By utilizing various elements that contradicted one another,
System of a Down created a unity of diversity, both of sound
and presentation. Watching the mouths of everyone around me
simultaneously repeat the band’s political views – seeing them move
as if controlled by their music in the same way Malakian does with
his own guitar – I realized why their upcoming albums are entitled
“Mesmerize” and “Hypnotize.” System of a Down is more in control of
its life, its performances and its music than ever before. Psycho.
Groupie. Cocaine. Crazy.