We're starting fresh as a brand new band. Speaking about the new music, bassist Shavo Odadjian stated, "It's going to be pretty revolutionary. We're taking everything we've done and canning it. "But when we looked at all the songs we had and arbitrarily tried to choose 'the best' 14 for one album, we realized we had two album's worth of really great songs, and that they all connected with each other." System of a Down, "Hypnotize" "Doing a two-album set never entered into our thought process," Malakian admitted to Billboard.
#Hypnotize soad full#
We're living in a time when people don't seem to even listen to one full album, so we felt the only way for it to get properly heard was to spoon feed it."Īs such, the band issued the Mezmerize portion of their double disc on with the Hypnotize portion arriving just over six months later on Nov. Our songs are tough to digest and I would feel really uncomfortable handing someone a CD with 25 songs staring them in the face." Rubin agreed, telling Billboard, "Everything in today's culture is short term and disposable. You can't just release double albums and expect people to sit there and devote their time to it. Malakian stated, "You don't have a bunch of kids dropping acid like they used to. Still, the idea of a double album was a little bit daunting for the band. There's a good amount of social commentary in the new songs, as well as songs where we deal with love, with reminiscing, relationships, politics and funny experiences." Singer Serj Tankian revealed to Billboard, "There has been a great deal of upheaval for all of us over the past year or so and that has brought fourth a lot of emotional material. The band started writing and rehearsing in North Hollywood in January of 2004, then decamped to the famous Houdini Mansion in the Laurel Canyon hills of Hollywood where producer Rick Rubin had recorded Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik and would later work with acts like Audioslave, Slipknot, Linkin Park and more.Īs the process continued, the band realized they had more than enough material to go beyond the traditional album format and while initially expected to have a new album by the end of 2004, they pushed the timeline into 2005 with not one, but two discs. "We're going to give everybody the System of a Down roller coaster, but don't expect it to sound like it has before." "We mixed a lot of styles together without making them seem like they don't belong together," said the guitarist. It brought out a lot of good material - not necessarily political music, just emotional music, you know?"Īnd while System had a certain style and sound that put them on top, the band was open to not so obvious influences such as Kraftwerk, the Beach Boys and the Zombies. For one month I didn't know if a bomb dropped on my grandmother's house or, you know what I mean? I didn't know. And we get a phone call and they're OK and we can breathe a little bit. Because it was like not knowing what's going on until we got a phone call. And it's precisely because of that weird aggression/aggravation dynamic that Mezmerize/Hypnotize is as strong a concept/double album as metal can offer in 2005.He elaborated to Launch that war back home factored into the process, adding, "The last two or three months or whenever that happened was probably the toughest time of my whole life. Of course, truth also drives SOAD to make passionate, if slightly screwy, decisions: Serj Tankian's ADD sputter of "eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em" and "banana banana banana terracotta" on Hypnotize Mezmerize's detour into celebrity baseball game outtakes on "Old School Hollywood." These moments are head-scratchers, no doubt, but they're integral to the experience - System of a Down confound and irritate even as they rock. It drives the boiling rage in Hypnotize's "Attack," "Stealing Society," and "U-Fig" on "Holy Mountain," it inspires SOAD to transform the sad facts of genocide into the album's most vicious, powerful, and arresting moment. Truth is the motor for System's spazzy, modernist thrash. But the extra cardboard slotting's a little extraneous, as are some of the sonic parts on both albums. Released in November 2005, roughly six months after its counterpart, Hypnotize does indeed feature a tri-fold design. It wasn't a lie when System of a Down said the packaging for Mezmerize and Hypnotize would slot together.
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