10 Years Later: Revisiting System of a Down

This will be the first in a new segment I want to start. Essentially, I will be revisiting artists that I began listening to ten years ago, both as sort of a commemoration of that anniversary and to review their music as a whole, with a pair of fresh, ten-years-older, and perhaps a bit more seasoned ears.  Basically, I'm asking: "Are these artists still as good as I thought they were in middle school or high school?"

And, as you guessed from the title, the first band I will be tackling is.... (drum roll).... (blast beat)... System of a Down!

From L to R: John Dolmayan (drums), Daron Malakian (guitar), Serj Tankian (vocals), Shavo Odadjian (bass)
...and I did that off the top of my head, after ten years...

10 Years Ago

Oh man.  Have you ever known a teenager who was fanatically obsessed with a band to the point of annoying everyone they know to death by constantly talking about them? Like, your standard One Direction fangirl or Twenty One Pilots fanboy today? I was ten times worse when it came to System. 

As a 13-14 year old kid, just budding in my exploration of popular music, I was eager to find a band with more substance than, say, the usual Linkin Park or (shudder) Crossfade that filled my portable CD player on the school bus.  I was also entering a bit of a rebellious stage of my adolescence, too, so if the songs swore or had more mature content, the cooler it would appear to me. 

Enter the perfect drug, System of a Down, everyone's favorite Armenian-American, Los Angeles-based, alt-metal superstars.  From the stereo in my oldest brother's car and on my friend's iPod on the way to school, I got my first fixes. They were unlike anything my young ears had ever heard. (And I had heard maybe a total of... 10 albums in full?) 

Loud, fast, HEAVY, weird, edgy and, most of all, addicting. It was impossible for me to get their sound out of my head.  Bite-sized hooks like "They're trying to build a prison!" on Toxicity's  "Prison Song" or "Everyone's going to the party, have a real good time" on Mezmerize's "B.Y.O.B."

I was helpless. For the next two or three years, this band absolutely dominated my music tastes as my number one favorite band (much to my parents' chagrin).  I gobbled up first Toxicity, then Mezmerize and Hypnotize, then the self-titled debut, and finally the B-sides album Steal This Album!  Unfortunately for me, I began getting into them right after they announced a hiatus which, as far as recording anyway, they are on to this day.  Because of that, over the course of my fandom I never had any concerts to attend or new albums to get hyped about, and the band's small, 5-album discography wore out quickly.  Until I started listening again for the sake of this post, it had been about 7 years since I had listened to any System of a Down.

Listening Now

So how does System of a Down sound 10 years after the fact, my ears loaded with hundreds of other albums in the meantime, metal and otherwise?  I've certainly gotten into music a lot heavier, a lot weirder, a lot more political, a lot more Middle Eastern, even.  Of course, though, good music isn't defined by superlatives or extremities, so that fact alone doesn't diminish the value of System's music. It just, perhaps, diminishes their novelty in those areas.  But how do they stack up now?

My general feeling? I'm conflicted. Let's look at the music in the order I first heard it. 

Toxicity

Experiencing this album with fresh ears was, more than the rest I re-listened to, very disappointing.  If SOAD will be remembered by music fans generally for any one album 30 years from now, it will be Toxicity. It put them on the map and contains arguably their biggest hits: "Chop Suey!", "Toxicity," and "Aerials." 

Indeed, throughout my personal SOAD fandom, Toxicity always seemed like the staple, the masterpiece, the true defining moment for the band. 

Now? It sounds extremely simplistic and obnoxious. The songwriting of the album relies on pure, visceral heaviness to affect the listener. Chugging riff after chugging riff, often with no break, as heard in the succession of songs from "Needles" to "Deer Dance" to "Jet Pilot." I'm just beat over the head with one repetitive, mosh-inducing riff after the other. 

The more melodic parts of each song are fantastic, like the absolutely celestial harmonies on the outro of "Chop Suey!", the Middle Eastern breakdown on "Science".... there's at least one moment on each song. But they sound secondary, like mechanisms designed solely to keep the listener from getting bored as the band transitions from one riff to the next.

As a teen, I hadn't heard enough music to realize just how simple the guitar work, and often the drumming, are on these songs. So Daron Malakian's songwriting technique was effective on me, since I just wanted what was heavy and head-bang-able. But now, they honestly sound like no theory or composition went into their composition.  All signs point to the band's primary form of songwriting being jamming to figure out what will make the guitar make sounds that will get huge arenas of sweaty, drunken dudes to beat the crap out of each other.

So, Toxicity? Flecks of brilliance, but overall very disappointing. But then I continued to their next two albums...

Mezmerize/Hypnotize

System's final two albums, released virtually simultaneously as one double album, were the next ones I listened to in my youth. And 10 years later, these sound fantastic.

The band eased back on the visceral, brawns-over-brain songwriting and focused way more on musicality.  We get songs like the polka/Mr. Bungle-inspired "Radio/Video," the 80's synth-driven "Old School Hollywood," the mock 50's rock 'n roll in "Stealing Society," and the straight-up ballad "Lonely Day."  Heck, even the lead singles "B.Y.O.B." and "Hypnotize" were centered around their incredibly strong melodies in the choruses.

On top of that, Daron Malakian essentially made his vocal debut on these albums, singing lead vocals for the first time on several tracks. Many critics hated this change, but his contrast to Serj's didactic, nasal, vibrato-laden voice is welcome for me. The two's vocal synergy was apparent to everyone after Toxicity (again, see: "Chop Suey!"), but on these two albums it's the main attraction. Listen to the intertwining lines on the bridge of "Stealing Society," the chorus of "Hypnotize," and the absolutely show-stopping climax to "Question!", maybe their best song, period.

That's not to say these albums aren't riddled with problems themselves: sometimes Daron is a little much, like on "She's Like Heroin," and Serj is still intent on beating half-baked intellectualisms into my skull.  But Mezmerize and Hypnotize now stand in my mind as the zenith of the band's career.

Let's look briefly at the last two.

System of a Down

This album is heavy, and that's its main appeal. The production is satisfyingly muddy, heavy, and lo-fi; it sounds like an independent metal production. It's easily their darkest, most disturbed album, with lyrics focusing more on death, nihilism, and anger than politics or banana banana banana terracotta. The songwriting is even more simple than Toxicity and the moments of musicality are fewer and farther between, so that aspect of SOAD's appeal is lost. It does, though, stand up fairly well as a piece of pure nu-metal and everything that awkward, short-lived, red-headed stepchild of a genre stood for.

Steal This Album!

This album is what I wish Toxicity was.  This B-sides album was obviously written at the same time as that album; the production and guitar tone even sound identical.  This album, though, is just so much weirder, wittier, and more fun.  Like Mezmerize and Hypnotize, it focuses on these moments of fun and creativity rather than on heaviness and darkness, like it's two predecessors. It sounds like the band is having a blast screaming about pizza on "Chic 'n Stu" and making up their own tongue twisters on "I-E-A-I-A-I-O."
Unfortunately, these tracks, while fun, are not nearly matured to be very much more substantial than Toxicity.  They're just more entertaining.

Now, you may say this preference for their musical, quirky side is an entirely subjective gripe.  But again, the chugging heaviness is simply not substantial enough, by any songwriting standards, to be worth anything besides organizing mosh pits as quickly and as easily as possible.  There's no technicality to it, no complexity, just speed and energy.  Indeed, in this genre that is important, but it isn't enough. Thus, I rely on their weirdness and knack for good melodies to get interested in a song.

The Verdict

I tried to keep this concise, but an analysis of a band's entire career is no small task, especially when this band formed a huge part of my beginnings as a lover of music and I have so much history with them.  

All in all, the fact that I found so much to love in the band still was really surprising. I hypothesized that I would be completely over the band at this point, that all of the music would sound as obnoxious and simplistic as I accuse some of it as being.  The fact of the matter is they had a really one-of-a-kind winning combination of charisma, killer hook writing, and fantastic chemistry, especially vocally.  They're a rare gem in the history of metal--flawed and ugly in a lot of places, yes--but rare all the same.  How could any teenager not get addicted to them, I wonder?  

OVERALL SCORE: 7.2
System of a Down – Revisited
1. System of a Down 2. Toxicity 3. Steal This Album! 4. Mezmerize 5. Hypnotize	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 A classic album, one of the best of all time. 7-8 I love this album. I'm so glad these musicians were born and made this lovely piece of music for me to enjoy. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. It has great moments, but overall underwhelmingly average. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this album exist? One of the worst collection of sounds that will enter your ears.

Weezer - Weezer (The White Album): ALBUM REVIEW!

Man, I've missed this blog!  I've missed you guys!  I miss writing and talking and analyzing and thinking about music!  It's been a crazy year so far, my mental health dragging me down quite a bit these past few months.  In fact, I've essentially withdrawn from school for the semester, which has a very useful upside: more time to listen to music and write.  So, let's dig into a new album, shall we?

Ah, Weezer.  I hope these guys don't need much introduction.  I mean, for a decade or so (perhaps up until recently), these dweeby SoCal pop rockers were a household name, following the commercial and/or critical successes of their 1994 debut The Blue Album, 1996's Pinkerton, 2001's The Green Album, and the annoying Top 40 hit "Beverly Hills."  They appeared on the game Rock Band, they did a music video with the Muppets, they were on college and Top 40 radio alike.  In short, they were radio rock kingpins.

Since Pinkerton, however, frontman Rivers Cuomo and his cadre of 90's revivalist Beach Boys have struggled to maintain the respect of music critics and "serious" music listeners.  And since "Beverly Hills," Weezer has struggled keeping themselves even on the radio or on the iPod Mini's of America's tweens and teens.  For the past 10 years, to be blunt, Weezer has been struggling.  A generation is growing up for whom the band that brought us "Buddy Holly," "El Scorcho," and even "Island In the Sun," defining songs of millenials' adolescences, is now becoming irrelevant.

If she doesn't know the chorus of "Buddy Holly," she's too young for you, bruh.

Through 10 years of lackluster, disheartening Weezer albums--Make Believe, The Red Album, Raditude, Hurley--fans have always quietly nurtured a hope that somehow the band would return in a glorious rebirth of colorful, quirky pop, winning our hearts over once more.  In 2014, we were given a taste of this, with Everything Will Be Alright In the End.  But we were cautious: this is... pretty good. But has the time come where I can let myself fall in love with Weezer again?

My friends, that time has come.  Behold, the redemption of Weezer.

With The White Album, Rivers serves up a tight, cohesive, substantial, and, most importantly, FUN album of built from everything that made Weezer so gosh darn lovable in the first place.  The songwriting strikes the coveted balance between simplicity and asininity.  Meanwhile, Rivers' lyrics strike the balance between quirky and plain awkward.  And there are hooks.  Everywhere.  You can hardly get through listening to "L.A. Girlz" the first time without sing along... to the bridge, no less.

I had heard friends and critics' whose opinions I respect praise this album, much to my delight and joyful crying.  So, when I popped the album in, I expected to be blown away by a total upheaval of Weezer's style, a revolution of their sound heavy enough to accomplish the redemption they needed.  

This isn't what I got.  The redeeming quality of the album is that it is not revolutionary.  It's not breaking any new ground, for rock music or for the band, really.  The White Album succeeds because it proves, in 2016, of all times, that good ol' alternative rock 'n' roll, like that which Father Cobain and Father Armstrong did give unto us, without any bells and whistles, is exciting and enlivening.  It's a (much needed) testament to the merits of the genre as much as it is to the merits of its songwriter. 

Music video for "King of the World"

Now, for the record, I need to get my gripes out.  I always skip track 3, "Thank God for Girls."  Lyrically, Rivers falls off the quirkiness/awkwardness tightrope and very whitely raps about cannolis and Adam and Eve.  Maybe I'm just letting the banality of neo-pop rockers like Twenty-one Pilots retroactively bite in the butt the band who sort of invented dorky rock rapping.  But Weezer certainly doesn't wear the genre well themselves on this track.  Aside from this, all there is to complain about is that at points and when I'm in certain moods, the songwriting is a little too predictable, the lyrics a little too bubblegum-ism.  But then there's the grimy honesty of "Do You Wanna Get High?" and the genius pacing of "L.A. Girlz," and I just tell myself, "Get the stick out of your butt and have fun, brah."

Basically, I love this album.  I love the Pet Sounds nods all over the place, like the jingle of sleigh bells on "(Girl We Got a) Good Thing."  I love the addicting choruses, like on "King of the World" or "Wind In Our Sails." I love the slick production, which makes each snare crack and guitar chug sound gorgeous and new.  If I had to describe the album in one way, it's this:  This is the Weezer album we all needed back in 2005.

Photo credit: Consequence of Sound http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/01/weezer-tease-the-white-album/

Really, all there is to do is just to give it a listen.  Play it in your car with the windows down on these new, warmer, sunny days.  Think back to when you first fell in love with the band; to when you first fell in love; to your first summer as a teenager; to the best ever time you went to the beach; to the last time you drank cherry vanilla Coke.  This is the soundtrack to good times past and good times to come. 

OVERALL SCORE: 8.8
Weezer – Weezer (The White Album)
1. California Kids 2. Wind In Our Sails 3. Thank God for Girls 4. (Girl We Got a) Good Thing 5. Do You Wanna Get High? 6. King of the World 7. Summer Elaine and Drunk Dory 8. L.A. Girlz 9. Jacked Up 10. Endless Bummer	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.