MARS VOLTA STEPS OUT, SYSTEM STEPS UP
By James Parker, Globe Correspondent
Boston Globe, MA
Aug 29 2005
System of a Down
With the Mars Volta
At: Worcester DCU Center, Saturday
WORCESTER — Cedric Bixler Zavala, frontman for the Mars Volta,
is a spectacular dancer.
Saturday night at the DCU Center, as his seven-piece band poured
out highly mutated progressive rock — a sound that marries the
titanic riffing of Led Zeppelin to the polyrhythmic pulse of Fela
Kuti’s Afrobeat orchestras — Zavala tore up the stage. He stamped
and twisted, backsliding on his Cuban heels, kicking away the base of
the mike stand to make a sudden drop, the bulb of his afro quivering
indignantly above the slim, black-clad body, and all of this without
missing a note of his wailing, swirling vocal lines. A saxophone
screamed then chuckled; the music rose around him like flames.
Physically astonishing, the Mars Volta is still somehow remote. There
are grand exorcisms in the music, but its demons are not announced.
The lyrics read like Dylan Thomas fed through a sci-fi blender,
full of ruptured anatomies, altered states, and other symptoms of
an overheated mental life. A sub-section of the track “Cassandra
Gemini,” off the band’s latest album “Frances the Mute,” is called
“Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream.” One wonders what goes on inside
the tour bus. Poetry slams? Birthing rituals?
It’s a brave band that takes the Mars Volta out on the road, but
the members of System of a Down know what they’re doing. These four
Californian post-metal heads, all of Armenian descent, have connected
with their audience in a manner that only highlights the opening act
deficits. The crowd, churning excitedly under a gauzy, germy haze,
was wired into every flicker and time-change, every falsetto squeal,
and metallicized grunt. “Violent Pornography,” a cultural diatribe
from this year’s hugely successful album “Mesmerize,” turned into
the most ferocious sing-along heard outside an English soccer stadium.
Singer Serj Tankian, nodding along in untucked shirt and comfortable
trousers, has less-than-dazzling stage moves. But his gestures —
the extended palm, the inclined head — are those of an orator,
not a rock star.
In a gnawing, satirical voice often compared to the Dead Kennedy’s
Jello Biafra (another highly politicized frontman), Tankian jabbers
out his sermons while his bandmates twitch and roar behind him.
There’s mockery in System of a Down’s presentation — the posturings
of guitarist Daron Malakian are particularly arch — but the kids are
in on it; each elaborate grimace and burlesqued cry of “jump up and
down!” only heightened the fervor. “You and me / Will all go down in
history / With a sad Statue of Liberty . . .” Young men with shaved
heads and big beards, as if their heads were on upside-down, thrashed
exultantly. Like it or not, this is the current face of protest music.