System of a Down slays at epic Forum show

OC Register

By BEN WENER
Published: May 25, 2011

Note: If you were there, and are wondering why that doesn’t look like
the Serj you saw, scroll to the bottom for an explanation …

As reunions go, the return of System of a Down this spring-into-summer
is hardly among the most momentous regroupings in rock history, no
matter how rabidly anticipated it has been by fans who went positively
berserk for Tuesday tremendous performance at the Forum — the best SOAD
set I seen, going back to the . Undoubtedly they will go nuts again
tonight at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, though I wonder if
they’ll scream as loud should a sound-checking tech once again say
“Daron mic … Shavo mic …”

They’re just over-excited, and who can blame ’em? But, as was the case
with Foo Fighters much shorter hiatus, there was never any doubt System
would be back — they said as much before they split for side projects
in 2006. For all those supposed tensions several years ago — they
certainly were evident last time I caught the group at the Greek — this
one-of-a-kind L.A. outfit remains as tight-knit as the Armenian
community it often commemorates in song. They essentially family, much
more so, it seems, than most of their contemporaries. Brothers just need
breathers sometimes.

So they took five years off and pursued endeavors that were
across-the-board intriguing, if also not as satisfying as a proper
System effort. Each served a purpose, however, scratching respective
itches while keeping one another professionally honed — none more so
than vocalist Serj Tankian, who explored his nascent theatricality via
solo tours and refined his dynamic, full-bodied voice with melodies (on
Elect the Dead) that were occasionally richer than the maniacal barking
he provides for SOAD.

Guitarist and co-vocalist Daron Malakian chiefly responsible for the
sound and thematic content of the group last studio recordings — the
erstwhile double-album Mesmerize/Hypnotize, released in two
chart-topping halves six months apart in 2005 — further explored his
industrial tendencies with Scars on Broadway, a far less active machine
powered by drummer John Dolmayan (who also put together his own outfit,
Indicator). Shavo Odadjian, as befits a bassist without a band, ventured
into other grooves, collaborating with the RZA of Wu-Tang Clan as
AcHoZeN and paying some dues as beat-slapper in George Clinton
ever-rotating P-Funk lineups.

Those were all fine stopgaps that kept System of a Down away just long
enough. Any less and it wouldn have mattered — nor would it likely have
produced half as much frenzy as coursed through fans at the Forum like
zaps of lightning. Never mind the surging waves of humanity that lapped
at the stage — I was busy counting how many circle pits would erupt at
the start of each song. Most of the time it was around six, though two
kept widening into a larger one. But when gave way to , the enormous
response reached a boiling point — and nine pit flurries broke out on
the floor.

As with Rage Against the Machine’s minions, the fervency of some System
fans borders on insanity.

Had the band stayed away much longer than six or seven years, though,
some of us might have been left wondering if System of a Down was
ultimately only a generation-specific rock giant, like David Lee
Roth-era Van Halen — crucial, yes, but principally to a very distinct
segment of people.

Unquestionably System is one of the most original and outspoken heavy
rock bands of the last quarter-century, a not-so-bold statement (if you
been paying attention) reaffirmed by Tuesday night galvanic 30-song set.
Naturally it would be a peak performance, the hometown stop on a brief
West Coast swing before the quartet heads overseas for headlining
festival appearances in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden
and Finland, and then later in the year in Brazil.)

Still, outside of explosive (but inconsistent) live shows, the band
reputation rests only on a formative debut and two masterful double
albums, if you paste together the last two discs and consider the sonic
breakthrough Toxicity (2001) and its bootlegged-then-released
counterpart Steal This Album! (2002) as halves of a greater whole. Toss
in widely circulated demo tapes dating back to 1995 and that still isn
much quality output in the same amount of time it took Zappa (one of
their heroes) to crank out four times as many albums.

But what a remarkable and increasingly relevant body of work it is.
There are scarce few tracks in the System songbook that don jab the
brain with sociopolitical subject matter: in Hollywood and are more
localized examinations of ego and celebrity, while this night one-two
opening grenade, Song and .Y.O.B. ( do they always send the poor?!), was
a stunning reminder of how succinctly SOAD can skewer national/global
travesties of might (or wrong) over right.

Just in case any unenlightened college kids turned up solely for a party
that they were too young for five years ago, Tankian, in the only time
he said much more than and you to the audience Tuesday night, made sure
the overriding message was heard. reached the point of our own
extinction, he said just after and during the build toward Mountains, an
icy alpine backdrop (one of several draped behind the band throughout
the night) giving way to a scene of infinite cosmos. We approached our
inevitable doom a horde of locusts we been without giving, reaping
without nurturing we are the Hitlers of the 21st century we are the
Stalins of the 21st century. Yet are also love we can be inclusive we
can grow we are not just flesh, we are spirit that moves through all
things. He doesn believe in governments and flags, he said — just
people and their inalienable right to build peaceful future going
forward.

All of that came through loud and clear — and was perhaps even digested
by the majority of headbanging guys and their equally aggressive
girlfriends — throughout System generous, ferociously played
performance, the musicianship of which matched the lyrical sting. A
colleague tells me he found Sunday set in Chula Vista perfunctory — he
felt more passion coming from opening act Gogol Bordello, the punk
ensemble that was rousing as ever at the Forum, thanks to smartly
revised pacing.

But Tuesday night System was anything but perfunctory. I, too,
half-expected them to play like they were picking up a paycheck on the
way to bigger sums in Europe; there no other impetus for these shows,
apart from hopefully (as with No Doubt) directing them back to their
mojo. have no master plan of sorts, they admitted on their website when
the hiatus was ended. are playing these shows simply because we want to
play together again as a band and for you, our amazing fans.

That isn falsely humble: it a simple aim that is now being epically
achieved. Either they rehearsed for months to get this robust again, or
the half-dozen dates before these Southern California shows has really
tightened them. Or maybe they just that good. (Or maybe we had time
enough to forget how instinctively skilled they are at pulling off such
diabolical music.) Whatever the case, Tankian has never sung better,
Malakian has never played better (nor integrated his weirdo stage
persona into the mix with such finesse), and the rhythm section can now
hold its own against Metallica’s.

They sounded revitalized from the break yet as seasoned as a band that
never stopped touring. Apparently free from whatever was ailing it half
a decade ago, a matured but no less striking System of a Down has picked
up where it left off, amazingly in flawless form, marshaling their best
material into a brain-rattling, body-hurling hurricane of thought bombs.
I didn know how much I miss their shrapnel until they took it away.

Setlist: System of a Down at the Forum, Inglewood, May 24, 2011 Prison
Song / B.Y.O.B. / Know / Needles / Deer Dance / Attack / Radio/Video
Hypnotize / Question! / Suggestions / Psycho / Chop Suey! / Lonely Day /
Soldier Side Intro Soldier Side Bounce / Kill Rock Roll / Lost in
Hollywood / Forest Science / Holy Mountains / Aerials / Tentative /
Cigaro / Suite-Pee War? / Toxicity / P.L.U.C.K. Sartarabad / Sugar

A note about the photos: Both shots of Serj Tankian, by Stefan Gosatti,
are from Big Day Out in Perth, Australia, February 2009. They are the
most recent live pics available from Getty Images. Photographers were
not allowed to shoot at the Forum, nor at any other stateside dates, as
far as I can tell. Why? Beats me. But I thought it better to post what
Serj more or less looks like now, rather than run a System shot from
late 2005, when he had long hair. He did wear a white shirt Tuesday
night, anyway. But he left the top hat at home.