The album begins with an extended, more rocking version of the song “Soldier’s Side” that also opened Mezmerize. The Mezmerize version was acoustic and soft where the Hypnotize version has the same melody but has the full band playing. This song is an ode to soldiers who have been sent to fight in a war that the band does not feel is right and just. System of a Down is as political as any band you are going to find but they sometimes bury their message in metaphors. Other times they will come right out and voice exactly how they feel and “Soldier’s Side” is one of these songs.

On “She’s Like Heroin” lead guitarist Daron Malakian and vocalist Serj
Tankian, both with their ultra-quirky vocal styles, tell the tale of the parallels between sex adduction and drug addition and how people will abandon their morals and do things they normally wouldn’t do to get their next fix. The music is stutter step, stop and go syncopated yet the arrangement is very pop rock. This type of mix is one of the things that makes this band so good.

System is at their very best when their songs jump from full-fury metal to other very different styles with neck-snapping, stop-on-a-dime transitions. On “Vicinity of Obscenity,” the most bizarre yet memorable song on Hypnotize, the song starts with the lyrics “Banana banana terra cotta pie,” repeated in an odd-time rhythm. It then segues into a funky wha-wha quasi- disco section before going back to grinding metal with vocals that sound like they were sung into a microphone hooked up to a power drill. It’s complete sensory overload that makes you wonder what planet the band landed on to even come up with the words and music. I don’t think the band is that into mind-alerting substances, but anyone listening to some of the Hypnotize songs like “Vicinity of Obscenity” will be left feeling like they had something slipped into their drink.

On “U-Fig” the choruses have nonsensical lyrics but a rhythm that is so bizarre it sucks you into the song, much like on “Vicinity of Obscenity,” yet it’s a completely different-sounding song.

The sound quality of Hypnotize is almost identical to Mezmerize, as the majority of these songs were recorded at the same time. The drums and bass all sound the same from song to song but mad genius guitarist and co-producer Daron Malakian sits in his room for hours coming up with different guitar tones and brings them into the studio for recording. Most of the time he has his primary compressed, crunchy but not overly distorted tone, however he will break things up by putting in different sounding guitar tones for accents. On the outro of the title track he has a very clean but effected tone that he drops into the mix during the thunderous tom tom fill parts.

“Stealing Society” starts out musically like a Slayer tune, with intentionally over-the-top rock and roll-clichéd “Yeahs” and “All rights” sung between breaks in the guitar riff. The harmonies during the verses and the chorus, sung by Malakian and Tankian together, are slightly out of tune, giving the song that signature System of a Down vocal quality. It’s not the kind of out of tune that sounds like William Hung on American Idol but it surely rubs some people wrong with its slightly dissonant quality. When Malakian takes over the main vocal duties in the song Tankian sings backing vocals that have a surf rock vibe.

Starting songs out with spastic guitar riffs that sound like they’re being played too fast on the record player are another System of a Down signature element. On “Dreaming” there is a classic example of this as Malakian is all over the place with his guitar, flying up and down the neck with a flurry of notes that give you a frantic feeling. The song then breaks down into a smoother and more melodic chorus, but always has that spastic underlying tone that was set up by the song’s intro.

Where they have a few songs that are similar in themes, Hypnotize ultimately feels almost like a parody of Mezmerize. The latter has its drug song “This Cocaine Makes Me Feel like I’m on This Song” and Hypnotize has “She’s Like Heroin.” Mezmerize has its song that makes fun of people trying to sell out to the mainstream music world, called “Radio/Video,” and Hypnotize has “Kill Rock and Roll.” The similarities continue between the two records but they had a better variety of tunes and slightly better song writing on Mezmerize. Hypnotize gets a little tedious at times, and you feel like you’re getting a few leftovers mixed in with some unique and really interesting songs.

The packaging for Hypnotize was created so that it can be slid into the Mezmerize case to make a two disc set out of the two separate discs. I really think the albums should have been released together because you’d then hear them more as one big collection. But having two separate chances to hit #1 on the sound scan charts was actually a smart idea from a business standpoint. The band is far from mainstream in their sound but they sure do sell a hell of a lot of records.

Sound
System of a Down sounds like no other band in the world. No matter what method or studio is used to record them, Serj Tankian's vocals are so distinct that they will always come across sounding like System of a Down. Rick Rubin co-produced this album with guitarist Daron Malakian and my guess is that Rubin left most of the responsibility for the sound of the band to the individual band members themselves. They have sounded recognizably similar from their first album to now, but the tonality of the rhythm section on Hypnotize is as good as it’s ever been. It’s noticeably, dramatically improved from their eponymous album, as well as from their breakthrough hit record Toxicity.