THE NEW COCAINE: SYSTEM OF A DOWN AND THE DANGERS OF IRONY
By Zac Pennington

The Portland Mercury, OR
Oct 6 2005

System of a Down
Rose Garden
1 Center Court

If you keep your tongue firmly lodged in cheek most of the time,
you’re eventually going to slip up and bite it. That’s one of the
primary dangers in this seemingly eternal age of irony: phrases, music,
clothing, and other affects adopted in fits of ironic appreciation
have the damnedest way of creeping out of their holes and into your
subconscious-and soon enough that joke you made a few years ago about
having an ironic coke party turns into 15-minute bathroom queues at
every bar in the city for the next five years.

It’s a slippery slope-in spite of all the defenses that we so carefully
compound around our lives, the viral strain of ironic appreciation
seems to have an uncanny capacity to work its way through our otherwise
closed doors of perception. And that’s the only viable explanation
for just how it came to be that a major-label metal band immerged from
the darkest corners of late-’90s radio rock to become every indierock
fan’s favorite guilty pleasure: System of a Down are the new cocaine.

For most of us, a tentative relationship with System of a Down began
with the 1998 release of their self-titled debut-a record comfortably
marketed alongside the era’s reprehensible rap-rock phenomenon.

Despite a campaign aggressively marketing the LA band’s Armenian
descent, most reasonable people saw little to distinguish System from
the hordes of goateed douchebags ruling the airwaves at the time.

>>From the very beginning, however, there was the faint call from
otherwise rational folks (and a few heshers) instantly able to
separate System from the radio rock’s most dreadful scourge in recent
memory-an assemblage of System apologists who’s fruitless refrain was
echoed time and time again: “Dude, I know that Nu-metal is totally
unforgivable-but System seems pretty cool to me. I mean they’re
Armenian, for godssake!” Needless to say, it fell largely on deaf ears.

And then something very funny (and I do mean funny) happened: In
2001, System of a Down released a record called Toxicity. Toxicity’s
near-universal commercial embrace led to a great deal of forced
exposure inflicted upon a lot of previously deaf ears. With the help
of mega-singles (by metal standards, at least) like “Chop Suey!,”
“Toxicity,” and “Aerials,” it was difficult to avoid vocalist Serj
Tankian’s incredibly ridiculous, politically tongue-twisted, angry
leprechaun rants for the better part of two years. And you know what?

Shit was kind of awesome-you know, in a gut-busting, hyper-dramatic,
semi-retarded kind of way-enough to make you want to stop when it
popped up on the airwaves. Every single time.

It must have been about a year ago when I read somewhere that
System’s double album-in-progress (later split into current mega-album
Mesmerize and soon-to-be-released Hypnotize) had primary influences
of indie-friendly touchstones like Kraftwerk, the Zombies, and
the Beach Boys. At the time, it sounded like just another piece of
amusing mythology to tag onto my favorite band to get all post-modern
about. And then, like everybody else, I actually heard Mesmerize-an
incredibly ridiculous, politically tongue-twisted, gut-busting,
hyper-dramatic, semi-retarded, and legitimately brilliant record of
Zappa (or maybe Patton) level sonic complexity.

At first I tried to laugh it off-I mean, it is kind of funny-but
before long I had to face the fact that I sincerely (and still somewhat
inexplicably) love System of a Down. And I know I’m not alone.