Analysis & Review: Disaster Theatre & Apocalyptic Celebration in System of A Down’s “Hypnotize”

The beginning itself gives way to so much visual, if one were to only look closely.

At the insistence of the high-hat – like the ticking of a clock alongside the bass – it begs you to look towards a horizon they are both timing; one that slowly but surely arrives at the companion behest of a flowery guitar.

They all bring together – a sunrise that is at first illuminating and expectant.

But then, upon the building-up of and then a sudden explosive entrance of the beat and rhythm that is to dominate, that very sunrise does not shine upon a brand new day.

Rather, it reveals in a red hue… a world laid waste to destruction. 

And that is only the beginning – the setting of which we lay our first scene, into the practically three-act experience that is ‘Hypnotize’, by religiously-instilling and politically-seasoned System of A Down; a band of which is no stranger to equally frightening you as well as enthralling you.

And all is both frightening and enthralling, when one – or in this instance, two – is regaling what could very well be the delirium felt towards the end of an already previously doomed world. 

Or so says the dark, yet eerily historic narrative they pull from, as unfortunately ready inspiration. 

Act I: Trends

‘Why don’t you ask the kids

At Tienanmen square:

Was fashion the reason why

They were there?’

Ever the orator of their subtextual messages, Serj Tankian is the first voice we hear and are used to hearing. Not that it isn’t just as common to hear Daron Malakian alongside him, who is the shrill tenor to the first’s teetering mezzo and bellowing screams that come from the depths of a Hellish throat. 

Just as constant are their back-and-forths and intentionally put interruptions in each other’s dialogue. Such is what makes them fun to sing with someone, as if having one hell of an argument meant for a stage. 

However, standing out in this singular performance within ‘Hypnotize’ is a progressively visible discussion being had between a set of survivors of sorts. From what wreckage that we as listeners meet them from, and that they dig themselves out of, they sing of something unlike their situation. 

Rather than the current destruction, they instead remember what came before – as if what they were, were in fact, warnings. 

And in mentioning Tiananmen Square, what warnings they are now were at first disregarded facts, and instead, heavily believable trends.

In plainer words – and if you would indulge a brief history lesson – from the June 5, 1989, midst of a state-wide protest in Beijing, China, spawned two events. One was lost to collective history as a whole, and the other was seemingly unforgettable for a time, but for the wrong reasons.

A single shot of a man standing before a formidable row of tanks on a wide street was the calling card for the entire protest. However, due to the aftermath not being captured, it has always been assumed that he was run over. Instead, some years later, it was proven that he not only survived but was never killed in the first place. He even managed to get to the top of the tank to speak with the soldiers inside.

All the while, the actual carnage of several students dying at the hands of their government was almost completely ignored; all for the sake of the sensationalism of one instance that longer the test of time. 

T’was easier to believe the worst, as is per usual, whether or not it was a perfectly placed lie to get a concerned mass of watchers to either look the other way, or look at something else entirely – be it shiny and new, sharp and chic, melodious and catchy; dangerous and cautionary. 

Or as Serj himself puts it, fashionable. 

Act II: Replacement/Displacement

“She’s scared that I will 

Take her away from there;

Dreams that her country –

Left with no one there…”

It trails off – that very verse above. Almost as if, even in just entertaining the notion of one’s homeland not being there when they get back is too ugly an alternative to imagine, or a dream that could just as easily slip into that of a bout of crippling sleep paralysis. 

Not so much a nightmare. Or rather, simply a nightmare would not suffice. 

There is real, palpable danger in being semi-conscious when threatened. While one half of such a state may keep you safe from reaction, the other half is quite a downside. In full, it leaves you stranded, rooted to the gravity of the moment and unable to move from the repetition of something that is now deemed inescapably happening again. 

Akin to such helpless feelings are such things as war, civil or otherwise, being there throughout a person’s life so often that one does not know what it looks like without it. 

In fact, as the same tune of the first verse creeps underneath that of the second with these new, and suddenly threatening lyrics, the idea of something completely unknown taking the place of what is familiar – albeit still a risk to one’s self as well as their will – is the most frightening alternative of them all. 

Especially when it makes the convincingly audible effort in trying to sound like the devil you already know.

It is a wonder, while continuing to listen and further becoming immersed, if the state of the narrative is a consequence of falling for it so easily. 

Act III: Distractions In Between

Indeed – in between each verse, of which the story in how we got here gets ever so much worse – there is a chorus masked as a distraction that makes no effort to be believed entirely. 

In fact, it has a slightly, sort of hysterical air that is breathily sung with a smile that you can practically hear:

“‘I’m just sitting –

In my car, and –

Waiting for my girl!’”

It whispers warily of a nature of being regurgitated, over and over again, and not just rarely being said when asked what’s wrong, or how do you fare.

Such questions, or similar inquiries, even being thought of in such an obliterated environment as the one being progressively illustrated throughout the track, some may think that fruitless, and bordering on nonsensical. 

Luckily for all those who listen, and have been listening as far as System of A Down has carried them, nonsense that is a lesson to be learned and cleverly disguised as a catchy song, is somewhat of a specialty of theirs. 

Never mind their long-time record; that is their orchestral signature. 

Just as well as they would expect any other casual listener to look past the deeper and more meaningful of their track selection. 

They know full well that it is the ones that instead catch you lacking in substance, and mock you for it, that turn out to be all of the most memorable, ironically the most loved, and best of all – the most vividly dystopian, that when at one’s breaking point, end up being the most entertaining.