May 11, 2005
Being Brash to Stir Things Up
By JON PARELES
The New York Times
System of a Down doesn't mind taking some cheap shots. The band played Irving Plaza on Monday night fresh from its appearance on "Saturday Night Live," where its leader, Serj Tankian, used a four-letter word and caused the predictable brouhaha, which gave him something to brag about onstage.
Televised profanity was just the thing to stir some interest in the band's brief new album, "Mezmerize" (American/Columbia), to be released on Tuesday, but didn't get much exposure in the band's set, which drew mostly on its 2001 album, "Toxicity" (American/Columbia). Mr. Tankian's other stage banter was about sex, drugs and pumping up a crowd that had already turned the floor into a bruising mosh pit.
The music was made for that: thrashing, stop-start rock that slowed down and got melodic just long enough to give fans a breather before the next blast of fast power chords and strobe lights. In concert, System of a Down's songs are like throttles governing the speed and impact of the crowd. But for all its muscle, the band has more on its mind than brute force.
System of a Down, whose members are Armenian-American, sings about genocide, war, religion, oppression and freedom. Between the salvos of speed metal, the songs switched - sometimes instantly - to minor-mode tunes that hinted at Eastern European origins, and the nasal bark that Mr. Tankian used for fast passages turned to a sustained, almost mournful tenor.
For all his sardonic vocal mannerisms, Mr. Tankian rarely jokes; even "Cigaro," the hyperbolic sexual boast from "Mezmerize," turned out to be about greed and overconsumption: "Burning through the world's resources, then we turn and hide." System of a Down can get away with slinging a lot of messages as long as the music keeps pummeling.
