The nü-metal age has come and gone, pushed aside by neo-garage and "new rock" just as the hair-metal of the late '80s was gassed by grunge. And in that model, System Of A Down was nü-metal's Guns N' Roses, clearing the way for edgier music by making an unnerving-but-bestselling racket. Even now, on the new album Mesmerize, System Of A Down sounds like a band out of time. While neo-wavers like The Killers bellow agreeable inanities like "I've got soul / but I'm not a soldier," System Of A Down cuts the crap, screaming "Why don't presidents fight the wars / Why do they always send the poor?" Throughout Mesmerize, co-lyricists Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian rage on, tackling macho posturing in "Cigaro" (with Malakian howling, "Can't you see that I love my cock?"), media pandering in "Violent Pornography" (Malakian again: "Everybody fucks… everybody dies"), and the legacy of the modern age in "Sad Statue" (in which the statue in question stands in New York harbor and bears sorrowful witness to a divided generation).
System Of A Down matches the fury of the words with an assortment of grinding guitars, offbeat time signatures, and hushed interludes, all given the band's usual avant-garde chop-up. At 36 minutes total, Mesmerize doesn't have time to wear out its welcome, and on the whole, the record makes for an intense burst of politicized hard rock. But while "smarter than most metal" sounds like faint praise, it may be the best way to describe the faintly praiseworthy System Of A Down. The band is good at what it does, and the pop-culture jibes of the thrash-Balkan mash-up "Radio/Video" and the robotic "Old School Hollywood" reveal a real intelligence at work, but it would be a mistake to call this music devastatingly clever. Aside from the deftly progressive "Question!", most of the songs on Mesmerize are bluntly screechy and yelling at the converted. The song-structures may be subtle, but the message isn't.