It's official. System of a Down can't spell. I'm sorry to any Americans out there who like to get involved with this whole using a "zed" instead of an "ess" thing, but they can't. And yes, I did say "zed," none of that "zee" crap either. Let's face it. America was born from the remnants of a British people who couldn't make it here for whatever reason. As a result, we technically own you. We are, quite literally, your superiors in every way. Ergo, you have no right, at all, to start pissing about with a language that isn't yours to piss about with.
I could go on like this, but there's an album to be reviewed and, let's be honest, with System of a Down, the review will probably contain enough anti-American sentiment without my incoherent and pleonastic ramblings. System of a Down have become what Rage Against the Machine never quite managed to - a deeply political band, left-of-center, but also accepted and loved by the mainstream. They have, somehow, managed neither to ever lose credibility nor to isolate the common, layman who doesn't really care that 4,000 hungry children die from starvation every hour. Political? Yes. Didactic? No.
Hypnotize is the second half of the band's double album that was released separately, because, apparently, attention spans are not what they used to be. And with absolutely nothing to do with the fact that, with two CDs selling at ã12, the nice capitalists at the record company are raking in a lot more than the ã15 or whatever it is, that one double CD would sell for. But let's not split hairs and start quoting Steve Albini on why record companies are the scum of the earth.
With minds flashing back to The Smashing Pumpkin's Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Nine Inch Nail's The Fragile and the failings of just about every double album to produce enough material worthy of a double album, System of a Down, somehow, managed to up the ante just a little bit, by actually producing a double album worthy of its double album status. Unlike just about every one of its predecessors, Mezmerize / Hypnotize isn't twelve good songs and twelve sub-par filler; it's twenty-four good songs, twenty-four fucking immense songs, if the truth be told.
It's still classic System of a Down. Any idiot can hear that. But there's so much growth too. Serj Tankian now sings and shouts, which provides an immense contrast with it hits. Meanwhile Daron Malakian tries to sing in tune, and sometimes actually manages it. Someone started pressing synth keys and there's the occasional use of an acoustic guitar drifting in an out. It's simple, easy changes, but the multiplier effect carries through the whole album.
While following the same sounds as its counterpart, Hypnotize is darker, more brooding and slightly more melodic. It comes across as more immediate. More instantly likable. It swaggers with a slight of latent machismo that never quite becomes arrogance, bounces along, erratic and weird, just for the sake of weird.
"Attack" opens like the rat-tat-tatting of an AK47 and powers on into "Dreaming," a fast paced punk-influenced song with splendid melodies and easily Malakian's best vocal performance, before you've had a chance to unduck and uncover. "Vicinity of Obscenity" opens with drum sticks tapping and descends into a sub-disco breakdown that makes you want to dance like Disco Stu, and slowly becomes, possibly, the most absurd song the world has ever seen, with lyrics about "terracotta pie" and "whores with bad feet."
Defined by crunching guitars, tight rhythms and eccentric vocal lines, it's unlikely that Mezmerize / Hypnotize will "Kill Rock 'n Roll", but it certainly holds the power to change its mainstream face. Combined with Mezmerize, this is one of the best rock albums of the 21st century.
