Tuesday, January 25, 2005

BDO 05 - System of a Down

In the end it was System of a Down that was the highlight of the day for me. After the mildly displeasing Slipknot and having to sit through half of a crappy Shihad set, I was ready for another disappointing act, but from the first song these guys went absolutely nuts, and those of us in the moshpit went absolutely nuts with them. I don't remember the correct order of the songs they played, but this is definitely everything they played, in roughly the right order:

Prison Song
Suggestions
Psycho
Chop Suey
Cigaro (New Song)
Forest
Highway Song
Kill Rock and Roll (New Song)
Aerials
Needles
Deer Dance
New Song Whose Name I Didn't Catch
War?
Toxicity
Suite-Pee
Sugar

They've all gone a bit strange since they last played here in '02. Serj, Daron and John have all grown their hair long. Serj and John have big affs and beards, while Daron is going bald so he looks a bit like a vampire or something with a widows peak. Serj and Daron wore coats and tidy shirts and trousers and it made Serj looked kind of like that crazy old hippie school teacher you had in third form. Shavo looked the same, but his cool Egyptian style goatee is longer. They all looked very eccentric.

Daron was off his nut all night, ranting and raving with little coherency. I think he was probably on something, as his guitar playing contained more passion than technical aptitude this time around (i.e. he fucked up lots because he was playing like a madman).

The most memorable part of the concert happened just before they played Toxicity. Some guy collapsed in the middle of the moshpit, and Serj stopped the song, saying “We have a man down here...” It took the St. Johns guys ages to get through the crowd, and the whole time Daron was yelling out “Man down! Man down! Help me mama! Mama! Help Me!”
“Every time we play here something crazy happens.” says Serj, referring to the last time when the barrier got knocked down and some dude lost his prosthetic leg. Eventually Daron got bored and said “Fuck it, I'm playing the song.” The organisers then charged on stage to tell him he wasn't allowed to play it until they got this guy out of there. “Fine, I'll play another song.” he says, and then proceeds to play a few verses of 'Sultans of Swing' by Dire Straits! I was hoping they'd play something like their cover of Pink Floyd's 'Goodbye Blue Sky' last time, and this was that much cooler for being spontaneous. (The coolness was lost on this moron, who thought it was an 'impromptu acoustic anti-war song', complained that they didn't play enough new stuff (no one knows the songs because the albums not out yet genius) and named them the worst band of the day.)

I was expecting a lot of political stuff from them this time around, considering what's been going on in the world over the last year, but while it was there (Serj changed some of the lyrics to Deer Dance to refer to the war in Iraq) it was mostly very indirect and unfocused. Daron's little speech before playing 'War?' went along the lines of “Stupid humans! Stupid dirty humans!” repeated many times.

I very much liked the reinterpretation of some of the old songs. Serj had a synth and a keyboard, and used them to great effect in the extended breakdown for 'War?'. The new songs were really good too. Lots of Serj doing crazy voices (“My cock is much bigger than yours!”) and general heavy metal craziness.

All in all I absolutely loved it. My only complaint would be that they didn't play enough stuff from Steal this Album, but I'm hardly complaining, since it was the best chance I've had to go mental and scream my guts out since, well, the last time they came.

With Toxicity, these guys moved away from the quirkiness of their first album to a more mainstream (but still good) sound. The new stuff sounds like a return to the old style in some ways (but heavier). Combined with their eccentric outfits and general craziness, I'd say they're not too concerned with retaining the popularity they enjoyed a few years ago, and while the new album won't sell as well as Toxicity, I'm probably going to love it.

Whew! Three days of big day out updates and I'm still not done! Hopefully tomorrow I'll write about the bands I saw at the very end of the night, and write a general summary, and that will be the end of it.

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