No one needs another seventy-nine-minute CD with thirty-nine minutes of filler. But the twenty-three tracks split between Mezmerize, which came in May, and Hypnotize -- all recorded at the same sessions and produced by Rick Rubin and System's main songwriter, singer-guitarist Daron Malakian -- would have fit on a single CD. Even that would have benefited from editing. "Cigaro" and "Radio/Video," on Mezmerize, basically a couple of songs about dicks and dickheads, were at best coarsely amusing. And that is the sound of spinning wheels you hear near the end of Hypnotize, in the gibberish and repetition of "Victim of Obscenity" and "She's Like Heroin," while the connecting effect of "Soldier Side" (the "Intro" on Mezmerize, the full-length terror that closes Hypnotize) would have been more obvious and persuasive on the same disc.

Still, there is much to be said for the way Malakian, singer Serj Tankian, bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan reopen for business here with "Attack." Hell immediately runneth over in Malakian's scoured-staccato guitars and Dolmayan's furious hammering. (If you've ever wondered how Metallica would sound channeling the Minutemen, now you know.) That hell, it's clear, is here to stay. "Candles cry towards the sky," Tankian sings in a mocking bark, a reminder of the vigils and memorial services that are now a grim fact of daily life. Later, during a break in the riff bombardment of "Tentative," Malakian bluntly asks, "Where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?" as guitars jangle like pieces of glass from blown-out windows. It is, of course, a trick question: Bombs are going off everywhere.

But this is fight-to-the-finish music, sometimes deliciously so. In "U-Fig," Malakian and Tankian suggest that one way to deal with evildoers is to simply devour them: "You and me/Should go outside and beat 'em beat 'em beat 'em beat 'em beat 'em beat 'em/All pathetic flag-waving ignorant geeks/And we'll eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em eat 'em." Hardly an adult solution, but it's fun to sing along. More important, System hit the hairpin turns -- pneumatic riffing, gypsy-dance thrash -- with a light-speed concentration that doesn't seem human or possible in real time.

And they do it all over this album, in the surprise-attack twists compressed into songs such as "Dreaming" and "Stealing Society." That exhilarating directness gives Hypnotize a distinct edge over the more mannered theater of Mezmerize, while the stark, mostly reverb- free production here highlights the dogfighting vocal interplay, rare in punk and metal, where it's usually one lead singer Yber alles. The constant shift in role and temper between Tankian's warrior-of-the-steppes bravado and Malakian's cleaner dark-angel tenor actually reminds me a lot of the heated counterpoint and weaving harmonies of Jefferson Airplane and X. It is not easy to tell, in the way Tankian and Malakian feint and collide, who is on the march or on the run. Maybe that's the point: There are no clear-cut victors in these songs, only brutes, victims and rebels. Tankian and Malakian play them all.

Two tracks deserve special mention. At 5:28, "Holy Mountain" is System's idea of going long. But the band members are all Armenian-Americans, and they bring a personal vocal grief and punishing crunch to this monument to the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 and 1923. (The river Aras, mentioned in the song, runs from Turkey, on the border between Armenia and Iran, to the Caspian Sea.)

Then there is "Kill Rock 'n Roll," 2:27 of chugging guitars and monk-ish harmonies, with the funniest line on the record: "Mow down the sexy people." I don't get the song's hook line, though: "So I felt like the biggest asshole/When I killed your rock & roll." If Hypnotize is supposed to be the death of rock & roll, gimme more. And next time, don't spread it around. Bring it on all at once.

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DAVID FRICKE

(Posted: Nov 17, 2005)