punkrawka's Full Review: Hypnotize [PA] [Digipak] by System of a Down
System of a Down already made waves in 2005 with Mezmerize, an album that instantly hit many listeners' Top 10 lists for the year but truthfully lacked for some direction and consistency. Nonetheless, the album had solid replay value and built up significant hype for Hypnotize. For those who don't know the story, Mezmerize and Hypnotize were recorded as a 2-disc session, but the charming anti-capitalist band decided instead to charge their fans for two separate CDs whose cases can be attached together by a flimsy cardboard flap! All bitterness aside, though, Hypnotize feels like a somewhat deflated rehash of the ground already covered on its predecessor. There's a samey feeling to the whole outing, without as many grab-you-by-the-ear moments to make up for it.
The disc starts out promisingly enough with "Attack," highlighted by the patented off-the-wall metal energy that's defined SOAD throughout their career. The lyrics take a general anti-war veneer without venturing into the overly specific. The verses are sharp, with hard-cutting instrumentals, before the all-out frenzy of the choruses, where vocalist Serj Tankian screams "Attack!" end over end. And of course, there are the expected moments of all-out ridiculousness, most noticably "Vicinity of Obscenity," with lyrical cuts like "Banana, banana, banana, terracotta / Banana, terracotta, terracotta pie!""Kill Rock 'n' Roll" is humorous and upbeat as well, but with a more substantive broadside against fashion obsessions in the rock industry (serving as a nice counterpart to Mezmerize's tongue-in-cheek "Radio/Video").
The album suffers two major detractions: First, the lyrics are the worst yet (the serious ones, not the ridiculous ones); and second, the album has frequent pacing problems, which especially come to a head at the closing. The title track is indicative of both problems -- meanderingly slow even though it's sandwiched between speedier tracks, and insulting the intelligence of the listener with the ridiculous rhetorical question "Why don't you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square / Was fashion the reason they were there?" (and this from the band who later decries propaganda). Similarly, "Dreaming" informs the listener that drinking bottled water is "causing poor populations to die, to die, to die," much as "Holy Mountains" calls President Bush a liar, killer, demon, murderer and sodomoizer and "U-Fig" asks the listener to go outside and beat the "pathetic flag-waving ignorant geeks." This is low-brow rhetoric, even for a band that's made a hypocritical fortune peddling it to well-meaning leftist teens.
If the above sounds harsh, it's only in keeping with the tone of the CD -- and don't mistake it for insinuations musical weakness. SOAD can still spin a helluva tune, but they do so much more ably in tracks like "Tentative," which mirrors "Attack" in tackling war in the abstract, or "Stealing Society," which oscillates expertly from quiet to loud and cries out against materialism in a broad sense. Even some tracks that are littered with lyrical annoyances are charted out expertly (most notably "U-Fig") in a purely musical sense.
The biggest problem is finding more than a few songs on this CD that don't fall victim to at least one trap. The last three tracks are decent balladry, but they bring the experience to a close at a deflatingly slow and uninteresting pace, especially for a band so characterized by speedy instrumental wizardry. And the first two-thirds of the disc have lots of ear-grabbing musical moments, but most of them cause you to roll your eyes as soon as you catch on to some subtle-as-a-lead-pipe lyrical tidbit.
There are flashes of the quirkiness that fans love on this CD, and there are sections where the band keeps their worst impulses in check, but generally speaking, Hypnotize seems to be best at constantly finding ways to do itself in. If you thought Mezmerize was pushing it, this album will probably be too much for you. There's enjoyment to be had here, but not enough to justify a purchase for any but the most hardcore of fans.
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