Review
Review
System of a Down’s explosive catharsis shakes London
Galvanising grooves, absurdist singalongs and escapist revelry: the award for best rock show of the year goes to...
We’re into the final week of the FIFA World Cup and, with England still in the hunt at the time of writing (come on!), every marketer and their cousin has jumped on the bandwagon. From burgers and bucket hats to bauble cocktails, if you can tenuously slap a St George’s Cross on it, you better believe someone already has. But there are no Three Lions – or cockerels, for that matter – on the many unofficial football shirts lining Tottenham High Road on Monday evening. Just four letters: SOAD.
For a venue more accustomed to North London derbies than metal gigs, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium feels every bit as charged with anticipation ahead of the first of two System of a Down shows here, and for good reason. It’s been almost a decade since the American-Armenian band last played in the UK, and these London dates are the only stops in Blighty on their European summer tour. It’s not just the football jerseys, either. It seems like almost all of the 60,000 in attendance have swung by the temporary Soho merch pop-up to pick up a shirt, confidently anticipating tonight will be an “I was there” moment.
Sludge pioneers Acid Bath do well to temper some of this anticipation, that muddy bass tone on closer ‘The Morticians Flame’ setting that moody, nostalgic atmosphere for the evening. Queens of the Stone are arguably big enough to be headlining this venue themselves, but Josh Homme seems to be enjoy playing the support role for an evening – hyping up each pocket of the audience with his characteristic swagger. “Have yourself a night you’ll never remember” is a well-worn Hommeism, but after a closing trio of ‘Go With the Flow’, ‘No One Knows’ and ‘Song For The Dead”, why not another banger? That said, the inclusion of lesser-played Era Vulgaris tracks ‘Run, Pig, Run’ and ‘The Fun Machine Took A Shit and Died’ get an approving nod from the purists, i.e everyone in the stadium.
Forgive one last football connection, but by the time Queens of the Stone Age have packed up, the stadium has reached a fever pitch. The true scale of the energy that’s been charging the evening is only fully realised when it is finally released. As the melancholy of the ‘Soldier Side’ intro drops into the hornets-nest chaos of ‘B.Y.O.B’, the place absolutely pops off. Great swells of arms surge into the air as the crowd jumps both en masse and in smaller circles within it.
I was around 10 when I first saw System of a Down on MTV and became hooked, and while most are here for that same hit of nostalgia, there’s a new kind of joy shared among the younger generation who weren’t even born when ‘Chop Suey’. There’s plenty of them in attendance, and their smiles are infectious. Since the band were last in the capital, they have continued to garner new fans on platforms such as TikTok, creating their own account in 2023 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of their self-titled debut.
Tonight is a giddy reminder of why their music resonates across generations. It’s heavy, really heavy, as the whiplash of the ‘Prison Song’ and ‘Needles’ attests. But it’s the galvanising grooves, absurdist singalongs and escapist revelry of camp that give System of a Down their own power. Bassist Shavo Odadjian and guitarist Daron Malakian seem to be enjoying the theatricality the most, casting piercing and almost cartoonishly villainous looks from the off. Drummer John Dolmayan’s stoic cool only enhances his bandmates’ histrionics.
Serj Tankian seems to just be taking in the vibes, tilting his head and stretching his warm, feline smile. “I love you, man,” says Malakian looking at the frontman and breaking character too. The pair’s vocals remain immaculate. Whether annunciating the tongue-twisting alliteration of ‘I-E-A-I-A-I-O’ or belting out his operatic baritone on ‘Aerials’, Tankian’s range is still expansive, while Malakian’s bright, almost nasal tenor is still transfixing. Both harmonise beautifully on ‘Lost in Hollywood’, but best on ‘ATWA’.
System of a Down’s music has always grappled with humanity’s heaviest failures, genocide, war and imperialism among them. Decades after these songs were written, their themes are no less urgent, and there’s a sense that Serj or Malakian might address this. “Pardon us for being angry,” the latter says at one point, “but the world is pretty fucked.” But that’s all. Rather than preach, System of a Down allow us all to share in that rage instead. By the time ‘Toxicity’ comes around, 60,000 of us have turned that into something powerful indeed.
