Concert Review - System of a Down
The Joint - Hard Rock Hotel - Las Vegas, NV - 10/12/05

Concert Review by Brett W. Bertram

Let me begin by saying that it was an OK show, even though the $52.00 admission was too much for rather a sloppy musical performance. They were pretty late getting started too; it was over an hour after the warm up act was finished before System of a Down finally began. I was getting sick of standing well before the show started. The place was dense with cigarette smoke and drunk girl spilled beer on my boot. At least she was cute. I really hate the Joint as a musical venue.

Let me also preface this brief review by saying that they played at the Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel here in Las Vegas, and that the Joint has very poor acoustics. I've seen many shows there and have yet to hear a clear, balanced mix -- not even John Mayer and his acoustic act -- so I usually give the benefit of the doubt to the band and presume that it is the room itself that is responsible for the booming clash of sound waves that passes for a concert at the Joint.

System of a Down was very high energy and the crowd certainly felt it, this apparently being their last show of a 2 month tour. I admire and sincerely respect System of a Down's creativity, originality and song-writing and recording skills but to be honest, I didn't expect them to be to be very tight as a live band. I'd seen live taped performances online and on TV and I expected them to be rough.

I am guessing that System of a Down played the Joint rather than Thomas & Mack (which i think they could have handily filled) because they are working on their live performance, and I appreaciate the fact that they could have overcharged a lot more people by playing the Thomas & Mack Center (the concert sold out in 2 hours).

System of a Down's music has undergone a profound change from their first monotone death voice nu metal album to what they are today, which is a genre bending mixture of metal and melody, with harmonies reminiscent of Queen with a healthy dose of (I'm assuming Armenian) Folk tradition thrown in for good measure. The point of this digression into their musical evolution relates directly to live performances -- the songs from Mezmerize are nearly all vocally driven songs dependent on the melody. Sure the cool razor sharp guitar licks are still there, but it is the vocal harmonies and the song writing that propelled System of a Down's Mezmerize to its current level of sales and popularity.

My point is that when you hear these songs live and the vocal harmonies are missing, they're not really the same songs. I know that many of the younger people don't really care, they're there for the energy and thrash, but I want to hear a good mix and would appreciate an effort by the band to recreate the songs as they were recorded. The band worked hard and I'm not denigrating their effort, but they seemed less interested in recreating the brilliant music on the album than with putting on a show. I would rather have seen them all sitting on stools faithfully playing their parts.

I understand it's their music and they can perform it any way they please, but as their appeal begins to spread beyond angry teens and the disenfranchised (don't get insulted because I'm one of those disenfranchised) who frequent head banging extravaganzas, they'll need to prove their chops in the live arena to gain the respect of musicians and adults.

That being said, I believe it certainly is possible for them to recreate what they've done on their albums, they just need to practice playing together live, pay attention to their parts and take advantage of some of today's technology to enhance the number of instruments present in their live mix (voices being counted as instruments).

Part of the reason their guitar parts are so tonally open is their tuning: drop d. I like drop d tuning, but playing 1 fret chords in drop d results in parallel fifths, which means that you're playing a two note chord, not a full 3 note triad/chord that is defined as a major or minor chord by a natural or flatted 3rd. Because of this missing 3rd, every chord takes on a minor character, which results in a somewhat uneven sound. On Mezmerize System of a Down fills that emptiness with voices (Toxicity and Steal This Album use lots of additional instrumental voices, but less vocal harmony). I personally like drop d because the Catholic Church banned parallel 5ths for centuries because of the minor, foreboding flavor that moving parallel fifths create.

Malakian left out crucial guitar parts in several songs that are instrumentally threadbare [tonaly/chordwise] to begin with, and their [Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian] lack of concentrated effort to strongly and accurately sing the vocal harmonies that have become their trademark was very disappointing. Malakian didn't even seem to care if he played his parts well and I'd swear that I sensed an attitude of disdain for the audience in his manner. He did although, play a snippet from Dire Strait's (Mark Knopfler) Sultans of Swing. This I assumed was to silence his critics who like to berate musicians who use drop d tuning. When Malakian got to Knopfler's super recognizable solo, he played through part of it and then performed a decelerando to about 70 BPM, perfectly in time. I'd bet he's spent many hours over the years practicing with a metronome to have that kind of control. I must admit that that did impress me.

John Dolmayan and Shavo Odadjian were the ones who seemed dead on time and in the groove (though technically there is very little traditional "groove" to their music). It was difficult to tell because of the booming mix but the drums and bass sounded otherwise very tight.

System should take advantage Sony's budget to improve the equipment used in their live shows. For example, there are harmonizers on the market today that could add some of the missing vocal layers to the live mix, but the vocals would have to be sung on key for the harmonizers to work correctly, and the vocals at this show, while strong from a power perspective were very weak from an on key perspective.

Shavo Odadjian on bass was the only stage-front member who seemed to actually enjoy interacting with and appreciate the audience. He seemed like a very likeable character. Tankian had a rather cool, almost wooden presence, which I expected. The long hair and unusual waistcoat gives him a unique look and style, though he exuded the same sort of superior aloofness that Malakian did.

I personally would like to see Malakian temper his prima donna attitude and begin to appreciate, or at least stop being belligerent to, the people who have recognized his ability. An uncalled for remark directed at press photographers really turned me off at one point, and though he did address the audience a great deal, it felt more like condescension than interaction. Though many things can be forgiven when great music is involved, a little humility wouldn't hurt.

System of a Down has reached that amorphous "Next Level," and now it's time they get serious about thier performances. They've written some truly ground breaking music with Toxicity, Steal This Album and Mezmerize but it's one thing to head bang and crank out distorted riffs at obscene speeds and quite another to accurately perform complexly textured pieces of music from a brilliantly recorded album.

   Brett W. Bertram