Ahhhhhh S.O.A.D., the best soap i've ever heard.....wait a second (excuse my idiotic lapse). From a country that we thought could only offer us those nice steel ash trays, the band members of System Of A Down (descendants of Armenia), came crashing through the cardboard Armenian gates exclaiming "Our voice needs to be heard!". Of course, their nationality doesn't really have to do with anything and the majority of them were born in California anyway. No longered concerned with System Of A Down's origin, we are left with a great first album that shows a new style in the heavy-metal genre, which has been lacking new styles and instead has been receiving recycled crap (ehhm, Godsmack, anything with Fear in the name, etc.). As Darin Malakian said "There's no such fucking thing as Armenian rock.... Nobody calls Bon Jovi Italian rock". The feel of System of A Down's first cd is of wide variety, because while there songs are short (most atleast), they all tend to change to something completly different that they then manage to flow back into the original song (Suit-Pee, Sugar, P.L.U.C.K., War, and Peephole are good examples of this change). System Of A Down remind a bit of A Perfect Circle, both of their albums never get boring and they both have a great sense of orcestration, knowing how everything should sound and when it should sound that way. This and other reasons only explained by listening to the c.d., are why I give System of A Down five claps out of five and the revolving clap award (we may seem to be handing these out like free cookie samples, but the first cds we review will most likely be our favorites).
Suite-Pee
A great song for the intro, which it was obviously intended for with it's very fast, but not heavy guitar solo that kicks of the song.
Know
Proably the first System song to show off most of Serj Tanakians very impressive vocal sounds. He can quickly go from high screaming to low sympathetic sounding vocals. I know someone who didn't like that aspect of Serj's singing (or atleast thought it was strange) but, fuck him, Serj RULES!
Sugar
One Of personal favorites off the cd that's funny and serious at the same time. It seems to be about man who gets high off of life in all the wrong ways (for ex. by beating his wife, playing russian roulette, etc.). The video is cool and at one point a cranberry pie flashes by saying something like "amphetamines kill", I couldn't be quite sure (it passes by quickly), but i've been avoiding cranberry pie.
Suggestions
A song that has got to be about workers getting through to higher officials (or regular people getting through to the government). One line says "But if you have suggestions you better get a piece of your ass".
Spiders
Another favorite (although all the songs are good), spiders is a very slow, emotional song that slowly kicks it speed up and gets louder, but it never gets very crazy.
Ddevil
An intresting song with some real cool bass and wierder vocals. That is one of the reasons I love this cd, it's so cool and wierd and HYPER! Sometimes we call it the sugar album.
Soil
It would be really tough for me to pick a favorite song of this cd, but if I could this would be one of the canidates. This is one of the coolest songs and it shows off the talents of the whole band with especially good drumming (which holds this song together, good bass, a real cool sound to the guitar (with a good solo), and more awesome lyrics. "DON'T YOU, REALIZE, THAT EVIL, LIVES IN THE MOTHERFUCKING SKIN."
War?
Another candidate for favorite songs, it changes from fast to slow to fast really well with a kick ass chorus. This song also has alot of meaning to it. In it, it speaks of the involvement of religion and god in war. Some quotes are "We will fight the heathens"(the chorus), "Reason he must be attained, must be approved by his god", and in a live video I saw Serj said at the start of the song "god wants you to fight in his war"
Mind
I have reason to believe this song is about the effect of parents, adults, and the strictness of religion on a childs mind "Mentally molested children of a mother, Mutually mentally molested children of sin".
Peephole
This is a really cool song and for some reason it reminds me of a carnival. It's proably because at the start of the song it makes wierd light sounds while you can sorta hear Serj in the background singing.
CUBErt
Sorta like Suit-pee with it's intro, but also sorta like Ddevil. Altogether it's unique. "Humans everywhere, preaching evil organs". This song is also very short.
Darts
"A HITMAN, A NUN, lovers" hilarious, eerie, and serious. One of the darker System songs. This song has almost no real direction and I really like that gutsy approach to a song.
P.L.U.C.K.
If you don't already know P.L.U.C.K. stands for Politically Lying Unholy Cowardly Killers. This would be up there as a candidate for my favorite song along with Soil, War, Sugar, and Spiders. This has a real good sound to the guitar and a really good rhythm, there's also some back-up singing in this song by Darin Malakian, which really adds a nice harmony to the song. There's alot more back-up done by Darin in Toxicity and that's partly why I prefer Toxicity over there first cd. This is a great first cd (one of the best first cds) and a suggest you go out and buy it, now.
If I did any bad writing it's because i'm tired dammit, this has been a review by Matt-o. bye(isn't that bye so comforting, we hardly ever say hello though, it's like we want you to leave).
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