System of a Down’s dazzling new opus Mezmerize hit the shops a couple of weeks ago, and immediately flew out, selling 800,000 copies in the first week. It is typical System, an amalgam of hard-edged rock, sizzling arrangements and the complexities of Middle Eastern melodies throughout. Allied with a lyrical dexterity ranging from the purely comical to politicised invective, Mezmerize takes SOAD one step further in their development as the most interesting and thrillingly exciting super league band today.

The album opens with what sounds like a lament called Soldier Side, such is its fragility and distance from the openers of all three previous albums. The song is Daron’s, and indeed this album bears much of Daron’s imprint on it. The slow opener works though because it sets up the cascading, raging intro to BYOB, which is quite possibly the most exciting slab of punk metal since the Dead Kennedys were in their prime.

Likewise, the scathing nature of the lyrics adds a menacing edge that takes the song way beyond those issued by their contemporaries. The following Revenga, a word familiar to Scarface fans, rumbles along at a frenetic pace and features what seems to be a splenetic rant against a former girlfriend. This is the point where the album really begins to take huge strides. Cigaro is both hilarious and deadly serious, in that it moves on from a comparison between the author’s genitalia (ahem) and yours, before launching into a well founded rant against global warming. Tucked away amongst the cocks, shit and cigaros are the lines “We’re the propagators of all genocide, burning through the world’s resources, then we turn and hide” and it is this subversive depth that makes System of A Down so damned important. Radio/Video, whilst being lyrically trite features some wonderful musical interludes and is a welcome breather after the fury of the previous three tracks. Like Cigaro, This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song contains a joke lyric about getting ill through eating fish allied with lines of pure poetry.

Violent Pornography is a song about just that, “the kinda shit you get on your t.v.” and features a catchy Serj rap, before a touch of equally catchy demented yodelling. It ends with the exhortation to turn this brainwashing tube off. This song belongs to John and Shavo as they hammer along to the song’s rhythmic foundations, and they naturally show they are well up-to the job!

Questions is this album’s Spiders. The song’s questions reverberate around lyrical ruminations on the afterlife alongside a tune of melodic beauty; and it’s partner song Sad Statue contains an equal amount of depth, lamenting the only world superpower’s apathy, and more specifically, their uncanny ability to ignore human suffering. Hollywood features in the last two songs, and given that Daron was born there and the band grew up there, the focus on that area of the West Coast is natural. Old School Hollywood is a melodic tune with a phenomenally catchy chorus, but not being a baseball aficionado, I am a little perplexed by the lyrics!

Lost in Hollywood closes the album in a wistful fashion, Daron sings lead whilst Serj adds some gorgeous melodies in the background…. It’s a song for beautiful losers everywhere.

So Mezmerize does not disappoint, and rocks with the best of System’s previous albums whilst adding some songs that show a maturing has taken place. This album could keep the listener busy for a couple of years, which makes the fact that this is only part one of a two album set all the more amazing. SOAD have much to live upto given that there is not one weak song on the album. It may well come to be seen as a modern masterpiece. Roll on Hypnotize!

Haig Melkonian