System of a Down

Hypnotize

(American / Columbia)

Record Review by Karen A. Mann

Listening to Hypnotize, the second half of System of a Down’s two-CD juggernaut, I just couldn’t stop thinking about Mary-Kate and Ashley.  They’re a package deal, right? But does anyone really pay attention to Ashley?  Sure, Ashley is the one who’s got it together.  She goes to class, she works hard, she doesn’t get into gossip rag slapdowns with the likes of Paris Hilton, and she apparently eats food on a regular basis.  And let’s just say it:  in the traditional sense, she’s hotter.  But Mary-Kate, with her bag-lady ensembles, her bulimia, her disdain for studies and predilection for Greek playboys, is the one of whom we can’t get enough.

The point of all this nonsense is that Hypnotize is a fine album, but Mezmerize is the harder, and harder-hitting of the two.  Of course, neither can really compare to the band’s earlier output, mostly because guitarist Daron Malakian is not only writing most of the lyrics, he’s also singing on all the songs—and his voice just doesn’t have the power of the foghorn-voiced Serj Tankian.

The one thing Hypnotize has that its more attractive sister CD doesn’t is a DVD featuring an enhanced stereo version of the CD (which really doesn’t sound that much better), a couple of videos (“BYOB” and “Question!” from Mezmerize), and a short documentary on the making of both CDs.  This last feature is worth nearly the price of the CD on its own, simply to watch Malakian explaining during the recording of a song that he wants all the cabinets pointed at a wall of acoustic guitars without strings on them because when he plays at Guitar Center he likes the way the sound bounces off the guitars on the wall.