10

System Of A Down
Hypnotize

Into the top ten we go!

In case you don’t know, System Of A Down released two albums this year, and this was the second of them (it only came out in November). So like You Could Have It So Much Better, I’ve not had this that long, but it bashed its way into the list within a few days and into the top ten in a week.

Hypnotize is a great album full of metal-pop genius. ‘Attack’ gives you a good spanking before you have realised what is going on, the title track returns to some of the politicisation of System Of A Down’s past with a rant on the fact that advertising is used to control society, whilst ‘Vicinity Of Obscenity’ jabbers about banana pie. Loopy. ‘She’s Like Heroin’ is my favourite though, with its lovely trademark System Of A Down guitar lick and its sing along chorus. How many bands invite you (indeed compel you) to repeatedly shout “Ass!” at the top of your lungs? Not too many.

On the downside, the awful ‘Lonely Day’ really doesn’t do this album any favours, because every other track is so good, and that is soooo bad. Why the hell put it on? I mean, it’s generic sounding, slow, dull, and to top it off, the repeated refrain of “the most loneliest day of my life” gets my grammar sensors all riled up.

Still, that aside, this represents yet another stonking System Of A Down album. They are certainly more accessible than they used to be, and are slowly edging out the real innovation of (particularly) their debut in favour of stronger basic song writing, but then that’s too be expected, they are getting older. The quality is still here, and it’s not like they’ve lost their own sound – they are still one of the most creative metal bands around (although I don’t really think of them as metal any more, just as System Of A Down). Cracking.

I know what you’re thinking: will the other System Of A Down album be in here too??? Well wait and see. Oh, the tension…