It's somewhat hard to swallow, but you gotta give it up to the guys for challenging any pre-formed conceptions their fans (or new listeners) might have.
Yet just when you've settled into their Mussorgsky like use of repetitive motifs, they burst out with "Stealing Society," which serves up some bizarre '50s rockabilly/vintage rock essence in the midst of all the clamor. Case in point, the title track, borrows pieces of vocal inflection from the previous three tracks, but takes it all up a notch, injecting a sweet guitar break into the middle for added emphasis. But here it all seems to come to a head, as the songs melt into one another and the two reprise familiar melodies from track to track and work on a more level-headed sense of vocal harmony than every before. Their vocal workouts have always ridden the fine line between impassioned seriousness and vaudevillian schmaltz, drawing upon the rich traditions of confliction that have always resided at the heart of metal. "Kill Rock 'N Roll" goes for the gut, but also includes that trademarked SOAD sense of humor and over-the-top flair, most notably in the vocals, especially when dueling frontmen Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian dip into mock crooning territory. In fact the two songs sound like one long number just broken into two sections (it's a lot like the structural and artistic conceit behind the two albums). This blends seamlessly into "Dreaming," which again utilizes the guitar driven skirl and makes use of the band's operatically inclined vocal flair. To their credit, SOAD kick off the album with bombastic promise in the form of "Attack," a skirling blitzkrieg of razor blade guitars, hyper generated rhythms that part way to reveal almost serene tandem vocal melodiousness before tacking off into a musical rant that lives up to the title.
Next to Korn's See You On The Other Side, this may very well be the coolest attempt at CD packaging in quite some time.
The stacked setlist truly spanned the group’s whole career as they played the early era demo track “DAM” along with their two 2020 comeback tracks, “Genocidal Humanoidz” and “Protect the Land.” Watch fan-captured footage of System of a Down’s Sick New World set below.Then again, if you take the time to insert Hypnotize into the Mesmerize packaging, you will end up with a double disc package and as a result a double album of conceptual intrigue. The band also revived several rarities from their 1998 self-titled debut like “Soil,” “Darts,” “Suite-Pee,” and “Peephole,” the last receiving its first live rendition in 10 years. The Grammy-winning rock quartet, who have only made sporadic on-stage appearances since their contentious hiatus in 2006, closed the main stage for the single-day event and unleashed one blistering hit after another, including the trio of breakout singles, “Chop Suey!” (which still scares singer Serj Tankian to this day), “Toxicity,” and “Aerials,” from 2001’s Toxicity. System of a Down hosted their only scheduled performance of 2023 at Las Vegas’ inaugural Sick New World festival on Saturday, and the top-billed heavy metal outfit did not hold back for their first live set in over a year.
0 kommentar(er)
