McCartney In Goal
McCartney In Goal is a monthly podcast that debates and dissects the greatest albums of popular rock music. Hosted by David Hughes, and fellow judges, Brett and Steve Sumner, each episode the McCartney In Goal team pick a rock or pop music album that they love and put the songs through an imaginary competitive style-knock out format to find the best song on the album. At times, they may be uninformed, biased and they are often a bit unruly. Come and listen in on the fun - and if you enjoy it, TELL A FRIEND!!! Twitter - https://twitter.com/mccartneyin Website - https://mccartneyingoal.com
McCartney In Goal
Toxicity (System Of A Down)
Episode 52: Toxicity (System Of A Down). McCartney In Goal is the podcast that debates the great albums of pop music, using a competitive knock-out format. Today we’re discussing, Toxicity which is the second studio album by the American heavy metal band System of a Down, released on September 4, 2001, by American Recordings and Columbia Records.
It includes the songs: "Chop Suey!", "Toxicity" and "Aerials".
Join us on an electrifying journey through System of a Down's iconic album "Toxicity". From the band's chaotic rise in post-9/11 Los Angeles to the riotous scenes at a free concert gone awry, we recount the events that shaped this masterwork and its indelible impact on rock music. Biting social commentary, "controversial themes and humour abound, as well as creative tensions between Serge Tankian and Darren Malakian that fueled the band's unique sound. Delving into the surrealist and Beatles influences, we discuss how these elements, along with Rick Rubin's masterful production, helped craft the album's distinctive blend of humor, activism, and serious themes. The Armenian heritage and Eastern European influences that shape their music also get a spotlight, offering a deeper understanding of the band's powerful message.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/mccartneyin
Website - https://mccartneyingoal.com/
Welcome to McCartney and Gold, the podcast that sets a great album to fight against itself in increasingly brutal knockout rounds, where we end up with one song smashing its way to the much disputed title of McCartney and Gold champion. I'm your host, Brett, and I'm joined by Steve Sumner put a little make-up and Guy Langley. That was so beautiful, deeply unexpected and rather beautiful for it. Dave would be here, but he's just sent me a note to say that he can't make it as he's got his big wood stuck in someone's sandy bunker, so I presume that's a golf excuse.
Speaker 1:I don't know who can tell who can decipher from that. Steve, it's been a while since we've done a recording for the podcast. Yes, and Dave usually does some puns whilst describing the album. That from that steve it's. Um, it's been a while since we've done a recording for the podcast. Yes, and dave usually does some puns whilst describing the album and I know you had certain feelings about that. I did have strong feelings about that?
Speaker 4:does that mean you're just? I can't tell where this is going, are you?
Speaker 1:kidding, I just think you need to roll with the punches are you escalating the puns?
Speaker 4:I've just, I've just dropped the first pun in there, missed it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, roll with the punches, the punches.
Speaker 1:Okay, this week we're discussing System of a Down's toxicity. It's actually been a while since we've done a record for the podcast. So while we bounce back well, x equals Y. Do you see, steve? It's funny because bounce is track eight.
Speaker 4:I still don't get roll with the punches Pun Pun. Roll with the punches. Roll with the punch Fuck me.
Speaker 2:I was looking for a punch in the system of a down Pardon me, we're looking for a system of the down pun.
Speaker 1:This is beginner's pun understanding. I mean no wonder you don't like them, you just don't understand them. We have a chance to shimmy for a classic album to decipher the science of great music. It's good isn't it Science?
Speaker 4:science yeah. Yeah, and you wouldn't need an aerial to know this album has had a great reception over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wrong sort of aerial, but okay, keep going. Includes Chop Suey, which many consider to be the band's magnus opus or, in this case, their magnus choppus.
Speaker 4:Okay, there's no such thing as a magnus opus, but that's okay, we can keep moving on. This is pretty poor. I've got to be honest. Nothing about this is working for me nothing at all.
Speaker 5:Intro done. Oh it's over.
Speaker 1:What a shame I think it was pretty amicable, those. They were great. Yeah, thanks, thanks. I mean at least someone's. I mean you probably understood the, the opening joke of roll with the punches. I mean I was really on a sliding scale there, wasn't I?
Speaker 4:after that, if you'd say, if you'd say roll with the, roll with the pump shares, I might have got it, but Roll with the Punches. When I was looking for a system of a down punt, I got nothing. I was like I don't remember any song called Roll with the well, that's right that's just nothing. I got nothing right.
Speaker 1:So, chaps, how do you feel about this album before doing the research for it? It's a fucking masterpiece. That's what you thought before spoiler yeah, spoiler there's not gonna be much narrative tension with you then is there, I'm the, I'm the opposite, right, okay, good, professional.
Speaker 5:I think our friendship, brett, you and I, we bonded very early on about a sort of heavy rock and an alt rock, um, and you were always in a massive fan of this record. You always brought it up. I think I, to be honest with you, I think I knew three songs going into it.
Speaker 5:Yes, I think you can tell yeah, yeah, and and doing it's been really fascinating, because I'm now obsessed with the record, wow, but I've come at it from a point of 2024, uh, which is, yeah, which is, uh, quite an interesting way to go back in time and listen to such a it's nice to do that, though, isn isn't it?
Speaker 4:When you didn't quite get something and you're sort of forced to spend some time with it, you're like hang on, hang on. Yeah, I think this is amazing.
Speaker 5:I just never go around to it. So yeah, I've been loving it.
Speaker 1:That's weird. It fell through the gaps because you're a big Rage Against the Machine fan so rage against shane, fucking shane, fuck you shane, it's my shane.
Speaker 2:Where's my shane, oh?
Speaker 1:where's my shane?
Speaker 5:yeah absolutely yeah, and they are that they are.
Speaker 1:In some sense they're like a, they're like a relative of this band, politically and sonically they're their cousins, they're distant relatives, I think they're they're more geeky, slightly anti-social cousins, which is saying something, because rage aren't, you know, I mean they've rage aren't exactly like super conformist, polished sound. You know, they're incredibly angry as well, but system of that is even more, I would say, impenetrable to the average listener yeah, and borderline comic at times yeah, yes, very, very funny yeah
Speaker 1:okay, so we're ready to get going. Chaps, I'm just going to go through the runners and riders before we start. So, um, on this album, we've got serge tankian on vocals, we've got john dalmayan on drums, we've got charvo adagian on bass, we have darren malakian on guitars and vocals. The album was released on september, the 3rd 2001. That was quite important. There are three singles on it chop, suey, aer Aerials and Toxicity. It was produced by Rick Rubin and sold about 10 million copies worldwide.
Speaker 4:Oh, that cheeky Rick Rubin. He's everywhere, he just can't help himself.
Speaker 1:He can't help himself producing another great album. I've just had a thought about Rick Rubin when doing the research for his album. He's basically because we have an arch-villain in Phil Spector. Yes, Surely Rick Rubin is a hero.
Speaker 4:I think he is the yin to the Spector Yang he's got to be. It's just incredible. He pops up everywhere, but in a heroic manner, Not in a. I've just gone and killed a woman and done bad things to let it be kind of a way no, what a legacy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean if if that's what qualifies for being a hero, then it's a pretty low bar anything better than that is hero.
Speaker 6:That's right hey guys, it'sca. Let's kick this thing off with the qualifying rounds.
Speaker 1:First round. Are we ready for a round one? Yes, bring it on, danny O. Okay, so we've got two songs in the quarterfinals. I have to put two songs in the quarterfinals straight away, just to put that out to you. We've got opening rounds which we're going to get to Help us get to the quarterfinals. Okay, so round one is Psycho vs groupie cocaine crazy psycho groupie coke Makes you high, makes you high.
Speaker 7:Do you really wanna think and stop? Stop your eyes from flowing Psycho groupie cocaine crazy. Following the right movements, you clamp down with your iron fist Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids. Following the right movements, you clamp down with your iron fist Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids. Oh yeah, they're trying to build a prison. They're trying to build a prison For the one in 11.
Speaker 1:Another prison system, another prison system, another prison system. But Steve, tell me first about the album release, tell me the times it was in, tell me a bit about what happened.
Speaker 4:Well, tell me the date again, because that should resonate.
Speaker 1:If it hasn't, resonated with you already, then it should. 3rd of September 2001.
Speaker 4:So how many days have you got? Four, six, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. You got seven days before something reasonably important happens. Um, and you also, on this album, have a song about a jet pilot flying over the sky and you're gonna do bad things, yeah, and I mean, I mean it's, it's not so the, the, the position in which this, this, came. So you've got a couple of things going on. One, september, the 11th is about to happen, so that this record will be eternally sort of locked in with that. And two, system of a Down on their way up and LA is a very febrile, dangerous, crazy place at this time, and System of a Down just tried to play this enormous free concert and, uh, this gets shut down by the fire department and um, they thought basically 3 000 people going to turn up.
Speaker 1:They go it's a threat of free concert to launch the album and like 15 000 people turn up and then firemosh was like nope and then a riot ensues.
Speaker 4:So there's a lot of nuttiness happening around this time and around this album, because System of a Down, a classic example of a band that were expanding and growing faster than they even themselves realised. So to book 3,000 people's worth of room for a gig and 15,000 people turn up, it's like, oh, hang on a minute. And Toxicity isn't even out yet, so they're about to break big.
Speaker 1:It's pretty crazy. I why? Because I was wondering why they'd gone from being. Essentially, they started off as a kind of like a metal punk band, but they'd been touring for years and they hadn't had huge exposure of their first album, um, and I was wondering, why did so many people turn up for this free show? And it's because I think they released chop suey as a single a month before yeah, yeah, I was going to ask what.
Speaker 5:When did the singles come out?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, all right, so let's talk about these two songs. Uh, psycho versus prison song guy. What do you reckon? What's your fave? What are you?
Speaker 5:thinking. Prison song, I think is an amazing opener, I mean it just it just sets the tone that they're not here to be. Because I mean, look, if you look at it from their previous album, which again I'm even less familiar with, I had a quick sort of scan through and I was looking into why Rick Rubin, you know, came on board and that was because he found them funny. When he watched them live he laughed, he couldn't believe. And you listen to the first record and it's yeah, there, it's what the hell is this?
Speaker 3:it's a bit, it's a bit more.
Speaker 5:It's a bit more ragged. It's a bit you know. It's got elements of social stuff in there. But this song opens with a complete sort of right we're here to do business. There's real shit going on.
Speaker 1:But when you're serious, yeah, when you laugh, when you listen to them, it's just for just sheer incredulity at how they're managing to pull this off and make it so good. It's's like fucking hell. This is amazing. How are they doing this? Absolutely, it should be terrible.
Speaker 5:Yeah they're essentially a three-piece musically. Obviously, vocals are separate, but guitars, bass and drums even live. It sounds phenomenal. And Prison Song is, I think, a real statement and like okay, you're setting the tone for the record. By contrast, psycho I. I think this album, if you had to be brutally honest, is maybe one or two songs too long and that would be one of my my picks for the chop personally but it's still you know, I think by that point I've I've got it, I've kind of got.
Speaker 5:They've done it so well. Every track is expertly crafted. I'm sure we'll get onto it, but there's so much elements of armenian folk and and amazing political you know, just downright sort of statements and facts and you learn so much by by listening to this record and then you come to that song and you, you, just you just need a bit of a break from it. I think so. For me, prison song is is is the one, um, it's just a punch to the face.
Speaker 1:It's an amazing opener. It's an amazing opener, Steve. What are you thinking?
Speaker 4:I'm thinking that having Guy on the podcast is going to be problematic if I'm just going to agree with everything he says word for word.
Speaker 1:We need some conflict.
Speaker 4:We need someone else. It's classic. It's height of the age of the CD, as a number of albums that we have done are guilty of. It's height of the age of the CD, which means one thing which is ooh, we've got 73 minutes to play with. We must fill all of them. He has 27 tracks, oh, fuck off, you know.
Speaker 4:And this album, I think, is borderline perfect, apart from two things. One one, it is slightly too long, uh, and and two, so I I do just slightly, I think I think it would be. I mean, I'm nitpicking because I think it's, I think it is nearly perfect. But I do think, equally, in an album where the funny stuff is really funny and lands really well and the political stuff is really hard hitting and lands really well lyrically, however good this is musically, and it's still brilliant musically, I think. I think as a song. You know there's been plenty of songs about groupies, but a song about a cocaine obsessed groupie with lines like you don't have to be a hoe, has has aged relatively badly, yeah, uh, comparison to every other song on the record. So if something has to go it, I think it would probably be only from a lyrical standpoint. Yeah, a better record without psycho yeah, that's true, um, I did read.
Speaker 5:I did read one fact about psycho that apparently the guitarist is playing the guitar with a vibrator. Vibrator, yeah, which, which is great. I love it. I do, you know what? It's such a system of a down thing, but at the same time it does reek a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's right in the intro. Yeah.
Speaker 5:We're going to have ideas. Vibrator, yeah right. How about you, Brett? What's your view?
Speaker 1:Yeah think prison song is just an amazing way to open an album. It has, it does everything. It sets out the stall of this album so perfectly. It has just incredible riffs. It's just this clenched tightness. It's got this extraordinary serge chonking and vocal where he just is just almost just kind of bellowing at you and just coming out of these extraordinarily mad lyrics. You've never heard lyrics like it in your life. Like, just like, like, if it's not, it's like a this huge polemic argument against the prison system in the us and it's just like wow, how are you managing to fit these into lyrics? But he does it. He does his deliveries extraordinary some of the lyrics he has to deliver, but he's, he's mandatory minimum sentences like he's, he's like when have you?
Speaker 1:ever heard that in a song before, or since it's unbelievable, never before, or since it's just incredible. But it's just got everything going on for it what this album is all about, so yeah.
Speaker 5:He could turn the ingredients of a pack of.
Speaker 1:Chew-Its into a heavy rock song, oh yeah.
Speaker 5:The man is gifted in many ways.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, so that goes through three nil. So round two is bounce versus jet pilot Pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo p.
Speaker 7:So it is bounce versus jet pilot. That's really hard actually.
Speaker 4:So many of these are going to be really, really hard.
Speaker 1:It's so ridiculously hard. I just, I just um, it's interesting, you two think it's slightly too long. I mean there are 14 songs. We're not having the hidden track on there, because I said this is an album just post the 90s, where, yeah, oh, hidden tracks, great, put them on. We're not going to use that. It's 14 songs we're discussing tonight, but there's just, there's no, there's no kind of fat on on the bone, is there?
Speaker 4:it's just, it's no, no, I mean, it's a testament to it. Oh, that it's too. It's too. It could be described as too long if you're nitpicking which we are, for the sake of our podcast, but do I listen to it thinking, oh, I wish it stopped now.
Speaker 1:No, god, no, absolutely not bounce, which uh is a song about, apparently. I read today group sex it is, but isn.
Speaker 4:But that's not originally what it was going to be about. Oh, what was it about originally? Well, I see this is, this is.
Speaker 1:Cumble dryer.
Speaker 4:Yes, no, it's about an orgy. It's about it's about an orgy and all, which is brilliant, because it's like once I realised that it's like oh yeah, she had so many friends, but there's only one pogo stick, so he's got to go to this orgy and they're all bouncing up and down, but what happened is that this is where I think some of this creative difference stuff that's basically stopped them making music for a very long time. Now I think the difference is between Serge Tankin, the lead singer, and Darren Milakin, the guitarist, because Darren Milakin is clearly a, a metal lifer. He's an absolute metal devotee. Yeah, and, and Serge, I've seen a couple of interviews where he says when it gets like too metal, I just find it a bit silly, uh, and so I try to kind of subvert that.
Speaker 4:So I wrote a lyric about pajamas for this for that song, and and basically the others, particularly darren malek, him's like no, and, and he's like what do you mean? No, and they're like don't, don't fuck with the metal. And it's like, okay, that's not metal enough for you, so you have to make it an orgy because, even though it's still really silly, yeah, it's, that's a bit more metal for them, and and so I think that's a, that's a problem. Uh, for them his kind of humor not quite taking metal seriously enough versus their, like, serious devotion to it oh, they're very serious, like.
Speaker 1:I mean that there were a lot there were, like they were spent four months in the studio and um malakian and and the drummer john domain apparently had a fight at one stage where malakian was hitting over the head with the with the mic stand. They both had to go to hospital get stitches and they're like oh, this is one of the greatest days in our band. We've just had a fight. It's amazing we're in hospital. They're like that's how much, how intense they were about in the metal and things like that. So Tonkin comes at it from a totally different perspective. He is coming at it from he describes himself first as an activist, so that is why he's so interesting and coming at it with these vocals yeah, I mean that's what?
Speaker 5:no, no, I just, I think, you know, like you said, like they talked about, well, serge talks about having to have the levity in the album, otherwise it becomes, you know, it becomes unlistenable to him and to a casual. But uh, they don't half do the uh, the well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they do too.
Speaker 5:It goes back to. I mean, just imagine being in a crowd and there's just a song that goes and you're like 19, 18, 19.
Speaker 5:Yeah exactly that alone makes me wish I could go back in time and just be there to watch it live, because it's just and the fact that's coming out of although it'll be layered and tracked to a point it's it's so powerful, it's so primal and sort of basic, but so effective well, jet pilot was also had the problem that uh chop suey did, in the sense that it was uh in in the ferment of of that that month in america it got.
Speaker 1:Some of the lyrics are just so kind of weird. Yeah, so weird, I think. What's the lyrics that wired were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot? Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 4:what is that? What is sergeant it's? It's dadaism. Sergeant, sergeant's well into like dada stuff you know like what does dadaism mean, you can just get mad lyrics
Speaker 4:it's a surreal, it's a surrealist movement and it was a, you know, because obviously people think of surrealism, they think of dali, but dali was like a visual painting, surrealist, but there was plenty of other surrealist stuff going on and the dadaists were like like super, super surreal, like doing just wacky shit for no reason at all. You know, there's no reason to any of this, we're just being batshit and and and he, he loved all of that stuff.
Speaker 5:So I think I think he does that in his lyrics quite a lot I'm just raising my, I'm just raising my hand on the zingle because I'd like to now, therefore, play my beatles card because, like john and putting nonsensical lyrics together, this album was heavily influenced by the beatles, apparently, yeah well, you're right, andachian did say definitely.
Speaker 1:the guitarist did say that he really listened to the Beatles a lot and learned how to put a lot of things into a song a lot of different elements, a lot of different rhythm changes.
Speaker 4:Yes, and harmonies as well. Malachian and Tankian's two-part harmony is very, very Lennon-McCartney, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Okay, so We've got to vote on something, haven't we? Well, I really love Jet Pilot. I love it. So, you're going Jet Pilot? Are you A hundred percent?
Speaker 5:I'm going to go Bounce.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 5:Steve, just because it's the most sort of batshit folk heavy metal.
Speaker 1:It is so good. All concentrated, reduced to the essence of this band there's like zero tension in this for me tonight, because every song I really like, every song it's phenomenal yeah I don't know what to say.
Speaker 4:I don't know what to say because, steve, are you gonna?
Speaker 1:bounce or you're gonna go with a jet pilot they're both.
Speaker 4:they're both enormously, but for slightly different reasons. Oh Lord, Come on. Move it on. I genuinely don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, you're going to have to.
Speaker 4:I'm going to go bounce.
Speaker 1:Well done, okay, oh, wow, that's interesting. Okay, so save my facts about bounce later. I mean, what I wanted to say about Jet Pilot is the sequencing on this album is phenomenal.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And you get three songs in it. Sing on this album is phenomenal and you get three songs in it's song four jet pilot, and you get prison song and needles, deer dance you're like fucking hell. That's intense. And immediately as soon as deer dance ends, jet pilot comes in and it's it's on the chorus, on the vocal. It's not like a. It's not like a one, two, three, four beat in, it's just straight in and you're like fucking hell. Every time it comes on I have to poison someone. This is too intense even for me. I need a fucking breather from this heaviosity.
Speaker 5:I can't cope well the first half of the album is pretty much in the same key as well, so that, well, this is it.
Speaker 4:This is why that this is this thing that we, that we said earlier about we something we said off mic we said we should keep for the podcast is this thing about. We all know the songs really well, we all love the songs, and yet, even knowing this album as well as we do, it can be hard to tell the songs apart, and those first three songs, and actually most of the songs on the whole album, are all in exactly the same key, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 1:I've got a note here from dave. He says can you talk extensively about guitar tuning?
Speaker 4:so please carry on okay well, well, basically, uh, it's, it's an answer. Black sabbath trip, which is, I play in drop d a lot on the acoustic.
Speaker 4:I'm getting to it I'm doing what's happening, I know, I know you do it yeah, no, but basically you take your low e string and you drop it down to d so that you have a nice, a nice d drum note if you're playing in d, and basically what Malachi and the guitarist in System of a Down likes to do is play everything in drop C, which is to say that you drop your low E string down to C and then play everything in the key of C and you drop all the other strings down a tone no, no no
Speaker 1:oh, do you everything goes down to drop.
Speaker 4:C oh, that's not the drop C, I've played. I've played a drop C, where I drop it to C and then stay in standard tuning for the rest and drop D.
Speaker 1:Did you ever do that back in the 90s?
Speaker 4:oh drop fuck me, can you get these jokes?
Speaker 1:quicker fucking. You look to me so blankly like what I was like. We just talked about Drop D. That's a good choice.
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah, that's better Mate, you need to just point or something.
Speaker 3:Hold up a sign I'm going to get a flag.
Speaker 4:The audience won't see it and I'll know, and it'll sound smoother Humour incoming, please react appropriately.
Speaker 1:Okay, so bounce goes through. I can't believe it. So round three is coming up already, fast upon us.
Speaker 2:It is X versus Shimmy. Tell the people, tell the people that arise. We don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply.
Speaker 7:Education for medication, and you are gone. Education's education now you're a go. Education for medication, and you are gone.
Speaker 2:Don't be late for school again go.
Speaker 1:What, steve? What had their career been up to this point? What have they been doing? What type of band were they? How had they got going? Well, they've been doing. What type of band were they? How they got going well they've.
Speaker 4:They've had, uh, one album, one self-titled album out. They've got a huge underground following. As guy said, rick rubens turned up and said god, you're hilarious. And then produces every single one of their albums after from from the you know the beginning to when they, when they break up or go on hiatus, quote, unquote, um, and yeah, they're following just around the time of Toxicity kind of explodes. And Chop Suey particularly is this single that causes a lot of controversy, gets a huge amount of sort of MTV-type play and they just blow up. You know it's a classic example of band blows up seemingly overnight, when really they've been around for years and years and years, you know, working really hard and it just looks like they've blown up to us because we weren't with them yeah, I think, I think it's.
Speaker 5:I think it's a very much a thing about luck as well and just the timing and the like, the undertones in america at that time, and they admit it themselves that the world just kind of coalesced. I think you do need a bit of luck to break through in in that coming out of a scene, especially when there's probably a plethora of bands. Obviously they were very distinctive from a lot of other bands but you would never put money on them maybe when Rick Rubin was seeing them or just before then to be the quintessentially 2001 heavy rock band, really no.
Speaker 1:But they spent about three years that first album they did quite quickly of Rubin. He'd kind of seen them early on and signed them and gone. Fuck, they're amazing. I mean he was laughing because they were so good and he just loved it. It was so kind of crazy. Like you do when you see a really great band that just blows you away, takes your breath away, you kind of you have to just laugh at the audacity of what they're doing. I think that's what he did.
Speaker 1:But, um, yeah, and they did a lot of a lot of touring. They supported slayer a lot, um, and because they were different and weird and had this armenian sense to them as well, they have a lot of armenian kind of melodies and kind of they get into some of the armenian folk rhythms. But they would get booed sometimes on stage and they would just go right, just play that song again, then just repeat it love that. There you go, have that, fuck you. So x versus shimmy says these two are both kind of the most punky. I think they're the short, kind of short, straight in shimmy, shimmy I mean it's just extraordinary that was those, the uncanny impressions.
Speaker 4:It's very good, isn't it?
Speaker 1:that wasn't me putting search tankankin audio file in. That was actually me doing. That was oh, that was, oh, my god impressive.
Speaker 4:Did you hear that English podcast? The other day where all three guys did Serge Chankin impressions that were uncanny okay right.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm gonna go for X because I just think it's just phenomenal. I mean, both of them move a lot and they've got loads going on in their two minutes, but I think X is just it's insane. I, I mean both of them move a lot and they they've got loads going on in their two minutes, but I think x is just it's insane. I'm going shimmy. Okay, you're gonna shimmy, shimmy guy. What are you going with? You're gonna have to guys grunting there.
Speaker 5:He's not sure it's tough, yeah, because it's yeah. These again, I think. If I'm honest, I think shimmy falls into what psycho falls into. For me a little bit, it's probably my second least I want to say least I am really, I am really, we're talking hairs you really want to.
Speaker 1:You want to. Instead of saying least favorite, you want to say 13th favorite so it makes it look like you actually really like it.
Speaker 5:But it's down the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you've got to cage it the right way I can.
Speaker 5:I really enjoyed, like I said, when I had this album recently. I was coming to it completely fresh and it was really interesting, the ones that stuck in your head and the ones that maybe didn't. Like we said, it's very hard to distinguish, and I think X I just really like it as part of that first half, until you get to Chop Suey. It's almost like you're in a musical, you're in a concept album, it's album, it's just right, it's just, it's uh, it's fully intense and it's completely immersive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're in, you're in their world. That it's a dystopian sort of la and it's just it's, it's part of that. So for me, I'm gonna have to go with x. Yeah, I think you're right. All the way up to chop suit is just a total intensity about it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that's why we'll get on to. I'm sure we talk about chop suit, but it's such a nice palate cleanse almost, because it's just, ah, you can just take in some melody and I mean that in a positive way you've been good, you can
Speaker 1:have a little bit of melody right now. All right, so um round four is dear. Dance versus needles.
Speaker 7:Circumventing circuses lamenting in protest. A visible police presence wants or fear. Battalions of riot police with rubber, bullet, kisses, baton, courtesy service. With a smile, I'm the staple center. You can see America With its dire, poor, avenging disgrace. Peaceful, loving youth against the brutality Of plastic existence, forcing little children With their folly automatics.
Speaker 2:They like to force the weak around, forcing little children With their folly automatics. They like to force the weak around. I cannot deny All the evil traits and the filling of the crates when you do come out and you slither up to me in your pippin majesty. But I'm gonna grow Till you eat the little bee. Oh, when will?
Speaker 7:I be free in you, a parasite. Just find another host, just another stool to post, cause you, my taper tells me what to do you.
Speaker 1:My taper tells me where to go. Pull the taper, buddy, you're right. So where, where are this band from?
Speaker 5:guy uh, originally from uh, of armenian descent.
Speaker 1:They are of armenian descent. Yeah, so they are from la, but they are from armenian community, armenian family, where they actually went to same armenian school, or three of them did, but never really met there in that weird way that you can be at school with people and then ignore them because they're in a different year to you and then years later, school, classic school.
Speaker 1:So years later they um, they kind of got together in rehearsal rooms. They met in rehearsal rooms and they were like oh, we're all from OK. So they shared a lot of similar kind of outlooks on life and actually the hidden track on this album, arto, is an Armenian hymn. They've got a famous Armenian musician.
Speaker 5:I mean there's a great interview with Serge Tankin and Rick Rubinin on the broken record podcast which I did skim through um earlier in the week, and it was fascinating to know that. You know he was born in, serge tankin was born in in lebanon, in lebanon and and was a sort of his family escaped the civil war there and his earliest memories are bombs landing in and around and shelter and you can.
Speaker 5:You can see why. You know he's dedicated his life to activism and trying to process that experience and put that across uh and analyze it uh, which I think is fascinating and just just generally there the armenian element and that sort of eastern european balkan area sort of sense of melody the scales, they use the instrumentation, they use it's just it is the reason why they are so special, because you don't hear those scales anywhere else in in rock let alone metal
Speaker 1:no, no no, and he. He said, yeah, he was, he was. He was brought up in lebanon from armenian heritage, heard the sound of the bombs dropping and that allied with the, the kind of suppression of, of the armenian genocide um, which happened, I think, in 1915, not in an empire yeah 1915, uh, over a million people uh were supposedly killed, killed in that and all of that made him want to become an activist.
Speaker 1:He's an activist, he seems as an activist first and a musician second, but armenian he considers his first language. So if he's like says, some of the lyrics kind of come across as slightly weird.
Speaker 5:100%, yeah, I think. Even with the Adalism on top of that, you've got this second language thing, which again is an incredible play on words and tenses. Whether he mixes them up or not, it doesn't really matter, but they're really fun to listen to and decode. What did you say?
Speaker 1:What's he on about? Why were the eyes of it? I mean, you just got to come back to that again because it's just so mental, okay. So I mean we've okay, good, so we've sensitively discussed that and I think it's the perfect time for me to launch, uh, tonight's quiz. This isn't mine, this isn't yours, this is armenia okay, lovely, lovely lovely okay, steve's got that one, yep and he really laughed. Listen, he didn't hear it, but I saw it. He did honestly laugh he's always laughing.
Speaker 5:There was no audio representation of laughter he just he looked.
Speaker 1:He looked. Okay. Well, I interpreted him looking slightly less pained as him laughing. Get on with the quiz. Okay, squeeze, okay. Uh. Is the capital of armenia, yeratin yeravan or yeratwat yeravan?
Speaker 5:guy, I'm gonna concur. I think it's yeravan.
Speaker 1:No, correct okay um love, a geography quiz okay, is the population of armenia three million, seven million or thirteen million? Three, I'm gonna say thirteen oh, unlucky for some guy, it is three million is it that small? It's that small. Okay, I didn't know, is it? Well, this is why we do this, isn't mine. This is armenia as a quiz.
Speaker 5:It's a great start with the title.
Speaker 1:Work backwards from the title I mean, that's as much work I'm ever gonna do anything. Um, is it predominant religion, christianity or islam? Oh, that's got you. That's got you what you're thinking, homelessness. What Is a predominant religion Christianity or Islam? Oh, I don't know, that's got you, hasn't it? What are you thinking, homelessness? What are you?
Speaker 5:thinking Come on, you should know this Christianity, I'd go with Islam.
Speaker 1:It is the first country to ever become a Christian country. Oh.
Speaker 3:Wow. So not only is it Christian it's the first ever Christian country.
Speaker 1:Okay, which of these countries does it not border? Because it's famously as we know it's famously landlocked, isn't it famously landlocked? We all know that it's as obvious as the fact that the system of down are very similar to the beatles. Okay, so which is? Does it not border turkey, iran or russia?
Speaker 5:iran iran.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does just border iran.
Speaker 4:I'm afraid it doesn't border russia oh, it's georgia, it's georgia, isn't it georgia? Georgia on your mind and there it is I looked at a map um for this and, yes, it's georgia, which, of course, I then thought well, that's russian territory, so I counted as russia balls. It was a trick, question trick, yeah turkey, ir, iran, azerbaijan and Iran.
Speaker 1:It's a trick question because we all know the largest disapora of people outside of Armenia are probably in Russia, and then subsequently LA, which is where they all formed. Now the last question in this quiz, my favourite one, is how many letters are in the Armenian alphabet? Oh, 32. Ooh, that's the strongest guy. This is for the win. By the way, just to ratchet up the tension, I forgot to do that. That's a terrible hosting. You're on two each. This is for the win. I'm going to go with 27. Ooh, 27, 32. Closest to the answer is the winner, and it's 36 letters.
Speaker 4:Yay, get in there.
Speaker 1:Yes, one of the most sophisticated alphabets in the world. There you go, it is your Armenia.
Speaker 4:Well done. It's my Armenia. That's lovely, beautiful, lovely stuff. I enjoyed that very much, thank you.
Speaker 1:Fantastic Right.
Speaker 4:So we're on to round four deer dance versus needles, and both of these have got kind of that Armenian influence really heavily in the moment, I think it's that that the thing again, though, between the political stuff and the funny stuff, because, you know, one is about pulling a tapeworm out of your arsehole and one is about police brutality again, or military brutality, and so you, you've got to try to. You know, they're both awesome musically, so you just got to decide like we did with with bounce and jet pilot, you've got to decide which way you're going.
Speaker 1:Um which one you love more? Which one could you? Which one could you? Would you not be able to live without hearing again for me?
Speaker 5:for me, dear dance is my, is my, is in my top uh, they like to push the week around I mean that again.
Speaker 1:Another example of when you ever can hear any other band coming close to a lyric like that.
Speaker 5:It's amazing and the title as well. Again, I've never used Google so much for listening to an album, whether it's for the lyrics or for the titles, but being isn't it a deer dance, a folk dance?
Speaker 4:it's something to do with spirituality and peace and it's an offering given some sort of to quell a hunter's thirst, or something oh wow, so I guess it's I guess it's hinting at the peaceful protest element of, yeah, the sort of brutality towards peaceful protest, and it's kind of, again, a very deep use of a, of a word or a title, um, to describe what is, on the face of it, very frivolous and very fun song, but it's actually got a hell of a lot of emotional heft I think I don't want to talk about politics on it for too long, but I think there is a I I totally understand the rage against the machine, um parallels that you drew earlier and that people draw in general, but I think that there is a uh, without getting too political for too long, I think there's a very specific difference, which is that oh, it was lazy and easy of no, no, no, I I know, but I think it's, I think I'm not, I'm not just criticizing you darling
Speaker 3:although I do enjoy doing that.
Speaker 4:It's one of my favorite past, obviously um, but, but I think there's a major difference, which is to say that that rage against the machines sort of you know what would be described as obviously very, very left-wing politics are. It's quite, it's often quite finance focused, because it's it's about rich and rich and poor and money and abuse of that a lot of the time, whereas system of downs is, I think, much more socially focused because, uh, it's much more, you know, the abuse of uh, abuse of political power and abuse of military power. I know that, killing in the Name, things like that as well, but I think that they don't seem anywhere near as interested in the monetary side of it as Rage-R.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I see Rage Against Machine as more sort of primary colour and then this is more secondary colours. It's a bit more nuanced, it's a bit more layering to it and it's a bit more. Yeah, there's just so much you can learn from hearing I think a rage song. You can learn some things and there's politics, but it's very sort of like this is the message. This is the message.
Speaker 4:This is the message but it's not a message you didn't. You're right. It's not a message you didn't already know. It's just being amplified, whereas I think the thing here is I didn't know about the armenian genocide, which is kind of their point yeah, so for me, I I'm going to go with Dear Dance.
Speaker 5:of the Two, that's my pick.
Speaker 4:I'm going to go with Needles, because Pull the tapeworm out of your ass is one of the greatest. Again, another lyric that you know damn well. You're never going to hear on another album. There are so many lyrics on this where it's like you know, instantly you can listen to a great Beatles song and think, well, that's a great lyric, but I may, I may hear that somewhere else. Possibly. That's like this lyric after lyric on here, it's like never gonna hear that anywhere else yeah, that that is.
Speaker 1:You'll never hear it anywhere but that lyric specifically, rick rubin says nearly broke up the band oh, yeah, yeah because they were saying the, the. The lyric originally, originally from Tonkin, was pull the tapeworm out of my ass. Yeah, and they're like no, fuck it. The other two, like Darren and John no fucking way we're singing that. No way, fuck off.
Speaker 4:Well, again, it's not metal enough.
Speaker 1:Stop messing with the metal.
Speaker 4:It makes us sound weak and pussy ass. You know we can't do that, no.
Speaker 1:If you're in metal, you can't admit to having an ass, let alone a tapeworm coming out of your ass. Pull it out of your ass actually. Yeah, that's good, but if you can pull it out of someone else's ass, that's metal.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or jam it back in, jam it back into their ass, stick it back up there.
Speaker 1:As long as it's not your ass and their ass. That's a definition of what is metal.
Speaker 5:So is it like when something's bollocks, it's shit, but if it's the dog's bollocks, it's bloody brilliant.
Speaker 4:Exactly, exactly that these are small distinctions, but they make all the difference.
Speaker 1:They make a big difference. They make a big difference. Who's?
Speaker 5:ass. Did the tapeworm come from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I've got the deciding vote, haven't I? I've just realised. I should be doing better than this, as I am hosting. I'm hosting should know that I just worked it out. Um, it's, it's gotta be. I mean pushing all the children with their semi-automatics. They like to push the week around. I mean I can't not vote for it, can't?
Speaker 3:not vote for it dear darts gotta go for it.
Speaker 4:I'm sorry steve had to look. There's nothing. I don't think anything on this album I'm gonna be, you know, upset about because everything's so great there's not a huge amount of tension is there with our discussion here.
Speaker 1:It's quite poor. We need to maybe confect some kind of complete disgust of something I think at some point Call something really shit. That chop shoe is rubbish. It's so uncatchy, so few ideas.
Speaker 4:Right, well, edit everything you've just said out.
Speaker 1:Read the next two titles and I'll tell you, one of them is a stinker. Let's do that. Go, go, go for it. Round five is Atwa versus Aerials.
Speaker 7:Hey, you see me Pictures crazy All the world I've seen before me Passing by, I've seen before me passing by. I've got nothing to gain, to lose All the world I've seen before me passing by.
Speaker 2:You don't care about how I feel. I don't feel it anymore. You don't care about how I feel. You don't care about how I feel. I don't feel it anymore. Life is a waterfall.
Speaker 7:We're one in the river and one again after the fall, swimming through the void, we hear the word. We lose ourselves, but we find it all Cause. We are the ones that wanna play, always wanna go, but you never want to stay. We are the ones that want to choose, always want to play, but you never want to lose.
Speaker 4:Well, I would say Atwa is an absolute pile of wank. What a piece of shit. That song is Atwa for at wank.
Speaker 1:At wank, that's it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:That's what it stands for. He couldn't even be bothered to write the rest of it or split those two words up. I can't look at it. You're serious, aren't you? Yeah, that's what it stands for.
Speaker 1:He couldn't even be bothered to write the rest of it or split those two words up. I can't look at this seriously. No, he's definitely not. Actually, nerd FACT is an acronym from Charles Manson. It is Is.
Speaker 3:It Is that the origin yeah, and it stands for?
Speaker 1:Is it air trees? Water animals, Air trees, water, animals. I think Air trees water animals.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and Malakian got a lot of flack for this because I think this came from him rather than Maflakian Maflakian. He got a lot of flack for this because of the Manson thing and it's a bit of a naive thing to say it's like when people A bit of flack for supporting Charles Manson, yeah, but that's the thing. His thing was that Charles Manson had these really, really strong ecological views.
Speaker 4:And he also killed some people and ran a cult and he's like I'm really into Charles Manson's ecological views, but let's not talk about the cult thing and it's like when your grandma posts something from the National Front on Facebook because she hasn't done, you know, her research, and it's like, and it's saying something that looks, you know, about soldiers coming back from war and it's like, oh you know, back in my day this wouldn't happen and it looks sort of relatively sensible. But the fact that it's like the national front, you lie, you fucking idiot man.
Speaker 1:come on yeah, I mean you do diligence. Yeah, I do remember reading something about it. He's like going well, you know, I mean I obviously I don't agree with that part of it, but he had some good ideas like yeah, I mean you know you won, you know you run one murderous cult and everyone, that's all everyone can ever remember, yeah, you know, hitler and mussolini, they made the trains run on time, but there was some, you know some pesky stuff, you know some some things I didn't agree with.
Speaker 4:But uh, you know, hey, those trains it's pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 1:It's quite extraordinary reading that, but he did it is about that it's pretty extraordinary. It's quite extraordinary reading that. But he did. It is about that, it's um.
Speaker 5:It's probably the most kind of folky sounding yeah, I think of it as the Paul Simon, simon and Garfunkel song. It's kind of got that la-di-da, da-di-da.
Speaker 4:It's got this sort of breezy all the world before me passing by. Yeah, but he has that incredible, uh role of the art on I don't feel there anymore, which took me ages to work out what the lyric is. I don't feel there anymore and I can't roll my house. So I can't do it, but I was like I was like what is that lyric yeah? Because he has that, he has this, like I don't know how he manages to roll his arm that many times in the space of time he's got.
Speaker 5:It's quite something, but they're two of the two of the sort of you know the melodic side of the record, aren't they? They're kind of two, yeah, more sung. I mean we talked about earlier but you don't. Track six is the first time there's actually a vocal well, arguably a vocal sung melody which is chop, suey, so all. And then all of a sudden you kind of get into the second half, which is a bit of that. But then it can. You know, aerials again is more of a classic rock, if you were to say there's a classic rock song on here that would be the one because of the tempo.
Speaker 5:It still does its crazy stuff, but it has much more of a trad journey.
Speaker 1:If anything it's going to get on Magic FM, it's aerials.
Speaker 5:Is that what we're saying? Absolutely, that's the one.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to get on Radio 2. Yeah, it's fodder playlists. Um, it's really easy for me. This I mean I do like at work, it is nice, but I mean reading it's a bit about charles manson slightly puts me off, or you know. Again another beatles reference, isn't it? Um, I'm gonna go with aerials. It's obviously the superior song, surely?
Speaker 5:yeah, I think I think I'm gonna come first. Bit of tension, well, no, but I think I'm gonna concur. The only reason I hesitate is because it's so nice when Atwa comes in for a piece of it and it's such a nice, the instrumentation and the sort of the levity that it brings and it has a sort of again, it's just, it's a different side to them that you kind of think it's weird. It's an album of very much of one thing and also, at the same time, of of not that one thing, because it just twists and turns and the instrumentation is all over the place in in a great way. Um, but aerials is just such a powerful when they do the heavy riff down, down, down, down.
Speaker 6:It's just just yeah, it's, it's, it's just a fact that rubin suggested that.
Speaker 1:Um can I? Can I interject at this point we have reached?
Speaker 4:I would say our limit for singing guitar lines or doing tanking impressions. I think we've gone over the line and we need to stop all of us?
Speaker 1:Are you saying it would be irritating to listen to perhaps not perfect impressions? I've listened to so many podcasts recently where you've just got this.
Speaker 4:You've got this in some some mid-laid white bloke doing singing the guitar line. It's like I know how it sounds.
Speaker 3:I listened to the album before listening to the podcast.
Speaker 4:I don't need you to sing it to me please.
Speaker 1:So yeah, okay, um it's not just you guys, it doesn't. It doesn't have the same production values as rick rubin and system of a down spending four months in a studio doing an impression of system of down.
Speaker 4:It would sound equally good to system of a down, almost certainly that's.
Speaker 1:That's, that's the power of the rubin okay, well, good thanks for admonishing us, uh, for just basically enjoying ourselves. What are you voting for?
Speaker 4:when you say it like that, I feel bad. I don't, I don't care because I'm right. Aerials obviously obviously okay.
Speaker 1:So aerials go through. So last round of the qualifying round is round six and we're going to get to the quarterfinals. Because it's the last round, it's Forest versus Science.
Speaker 7:The last round is Forest vs Science. Why can't you see?
Speaker 2:that you are my child. Why don't you know that you are my mind?
Speaker 7:Tell everyone in the world, making new possibilities a reality, predicting the future of things we all know, fighting off the disease, programming of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries. Science has to recognize the single most Important element of human existence Letting the reins go to the unfolding Is faith, faith, faith, faith. Science has failed our world.
Speaker 2:Science has failed on my very eyes. Science has to recognise the single most important Ooh I think that's relatively easy.
Speaker 5:What are you going for, steve? What would be your gut on those two? Because we can get into the detail a bit more, maybe in the next Forest.
Speaker 4:Forest has grown on me probably most of the things on the album actually over time and I think so it's on you.
Speaker 6:Yeah, the front, I see what you did there thanks, he held up
Speaker 4:his he held up his joke flag guys. Um, yeah, but I think science. Uh, I liked equally to forest at the beginning, but I haven't. I don't like it any more than when I started. Um, yeah, so it's great. Yeah, that would be it. That's what I've got to say.
Speaker 1:I said it now. Okay, so you're going with Forrest Guy, let's just push through on this one. Let's push through to those quarterfinals. What are you going with?
Speaker 5:I'm probably going to go with the same answer, although it does at times sound a little bit reminiscent that they found a formula, sometimes in terms of melodically reminiscent that they found a formula, sometimes in terms of yes, of melodically it's similar, is it chop suey? It's kind of it's got elements of it.
Speaker 4:It feels like a relative, I think. I think atwa and forest have structural similarities to chop suey yeah but I yeah it still has enough merit, I think, to win in this scenario.
Speaker 5:I still think it's brilliant, uh, and when I did my first full listen through, it was the one that I was really surprised. In the second half I was like, oh, I really like that. I didn't know that one at all also Forrest.
Speaker 4:I love the little vocal ticks. He sticks at the end of lines. Come with me, my little friend, and he does these little. He makes those lines more interesting by doing this little little tick or little like exclamation at the end of each line can I just bring you back to your previous?
Speaker 5:point about doing impressions shut up, I've blown it listeners.
Speaker 4:I've blown it.
Speaker 5:I mean you were you were cool for at least two whole minutes there and you fucked up yourself langley's called me out and I've got you out, not on this album, it's just. You just want to imitate it because it's so infectious.
Speaker 4:Yes, it is happening more than usual. Yes, that is fucking beautiful this album okay.
Speaker 1:So, um, yeah, forest, I totally agree, we'll get. We'll talk about that in the course it's going through the quarterfinals.
Speaker 5:Uh, science so yeah, it feels it feels dismiss it, but it's really good. Oh, it's so good like it's got a real.
Speaker 1:It's got probably the most face melting, face melting riff on the album. Oh fuck, I've just done it. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, guy, you're the only one left. We need a swear jar. You're the only one left now. But now we can't do anymore because Steve's told us. It's awful, he's been the worst defender from the point that you told us off since the interjection.
Speaker 1:When I say that from the point you told us you did it first and then I was agreeing, and then I fucking did it. I agree. It's awful. It's awful broadcasting.
Speaker 4:It's terrible we've all done it. I hate it.
Speaker 1:You're the only one left guy who's got any integrity all the people like it.
Speaker 5:Let's do more of it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's it but it is an incredible riff that specifically that moment reminds me of Rage Against the Machine. Quite a lot that riff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and on the sorry Brett.
Speaker 1:No, no, I love it. I mean, I mean, it's got some crazy, it's got, actually it's got some quite woo-woo hippie lyrics.
Speaker 4:Well, this is the point I was going to make because I what annoys me, um, is that you got, you know again I referenced earlier. You know you get the parent throwing the cd out of the window, because when angels deserve to die, I don't want any of this satanic nonsense. And it's like firstly, he's again, he's, he's singing that in the character as a narrator, and it isn't. There's nothing satanic about that, it's just someone who's suicidal we'll get to the song chop serial. Someone who's suicidal and is is miffed about a whole lot of stuff. So they're, they're throwing all sorts of accusations around, again in character.
Speaker 4:And then you look at something like science which is essentially saying you know, spirit runs through all things and faith is the most important thing that we have. You know, science has failed us. What we need right now is is the solidity of religion to hold society together. But your parents don't want to hear that, they just want to hear psycho, groupie, cocaine, crazy. Do you know what I mean? And it's like come on, use a bit of common sense here, don't just do the parental thing you know?
Speaker 1:no, I just think those bloody parents in the early 2000s what were?
Speaker 3:they like outrageous.
Speaker 1:A repressive bunch of bastards, terrible. Um, I mean to be honest, most couldn't have deciphered any of the lyrics because they're pretty impenetrable impenetrable.
Speaker 5:I have actually just Googled them because I could not remember what he says, and it's the spirit moves through all things, but he says it at such speed that I thought it was something about hysterical ball bearings. Who knows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it could be like telling you to go fuck yourself, and that's what it feels like. It's like he's so powerful his vocal, but it's basically, yeah, his spirit moves through all things and science has failed Mother Earth. I mean, it's so hippie If you put that over a nice acoustic guitar in the background. You're like, oh, this is like a late 70s or an early 70s folk rock lyric. You know it's incredible. Yeah, but it's going out, it is run, you are through to the quarterfinals okay, so we're ready for the quarterfinals.
Speaker 6:A upshot just popping out a goal to tell you it's now time for the quarterfinals, okay so we've waded our way through the opening round and we're now at the quarterfinals.
Speaker 1:This is a business end to the competition. If this is a great, this is just going to get harder and harder. I think to kind of whittle down.
Speaker 5:Yeah, now it gets really serious and really hard it's going to get as brutal as some of their riffs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so first quarter final, and it's been waiting there. Glowering in the background is Chop Suey vs.
Speaker 7:Prison Song prison zone Undescribable with a shake up. Why'd you leave the kids up on the table? Here you go, create another fable. You wanted to Grab a brush and put on a little makeup. You wanted to. Undescribable with a shake up. You wanted to. Why'd you leave the kids up on the table? You wanted to. Well, I don't think you trust In my self-righteous suicide I cry.
Speaker 7:Angels deserve to die. Minor drug offenders fill your prisons. You don't even flinch All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich. Minor drug offenders fill your prisons. You don't even flinch All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich Mother. I crack my smack, my bitch, right here in Hollywood. The percentage of Americans in the prison system, the prison system has doubled since 1985.
Speaker 1:They're trying to build a prison. They're trying to build a prison. They're trying to build a prison. They're trying to build a prison For you, I mean a living, indeed. I mean, we're just talking recently we were just in the last round about Forest and that being kind of like a Similar to Chop To, but it's like a prototype, isn it, of that song. Sometimes bands will do that they'll write certain songs that are similar to it and then they'll perfect it, like queen, for example, on, on. They did the prophet song, didn't they? And bright and rock, and then they perfect it with bohemian rhapsody.
Speaker 4:That's just literally nothing that queen perfected, but let's move on wow, that's a bummer I did the last time.
Speaker 1:I did the introduction, I did say the man who puts the cons into controversy and that was quite the most controversial thing to just drop. I love it. Do you want to back it up anyone? I mean, is there going to be a lot of crossover between System of Down and Queen?
Speaker 5:I think there is Queen can fuck off?
Speaker 4:No, I think there is.
Speaker 5:Don't spell down.
Speaker 4:Queen, there is. Queen needs a fuck riser.
Speaker 1:He's on it. I love it. I mean, dare I goad him into more of a rant?
Speaker 4:Save it for the day. Well, edit that out. I didn't say anything. I don't want to deal with the post.
Speaker 1:You do not want to deal with that? Okay, so Chop Suey versus Prison Song, it's just. I mean, just what can you say about Chop Suey? Guy, talk to me, I'm struggling.
Speaker 5:This is just the song. It's an amazing song, but it's the song, I think, of all the early 2000s and MTV still being around and going to Reading Festival and just that whole era was defined by this one mad song about such angst and sort of darkness.
Speaker 1:It's a phenomenal song.
Speaker 4:Were you aware of it at the time then?
Speaker 5:yeah, oh yeah. So this is one of the three songs. I mean, I knew the singles. I mean, hands up, I only really knew the singles when this album came out and, uh, the thing that really struck me was the lyrical content. That was what made them so obviously the rhythm changes and the stops and the starts and the kind of weird sort of banjos and 12 strings in there and stuff, but it was the lyrics that really, just, um, said things that you didn't normally hear in these sort of songs, um, and they were really, uh, yeah, really kind of captivating, I thought this song passed me by completely, really, um, so it's passed you by.
Speaker 4:This song I had not. Basically, I came to this album around about 2010 in its entirety. I don't remember why I picked it up and listened to it. I stuck a CD in for a journey to go and see my aunt and I listened to the whole thing Relaxing journey.
Speaker 5:How fast were you driving? Calm me down. How did you, how, how?
Speaker 4:fast were you driving.
Speaker 1:Calm me down. How did that happen? So you put the CD on, yeah, and you're like I'm just going to put the CD on and it must have melted your brains off?
Speaker 4:It did, and I remember listening to it time after time, after time again. But the thing is Chop Suey. I guess it did stand out, but to me I didn't know. Oh, so you had no knowledge of what was the single I I had not ever heard that song or experienced that song in any manner.
Speaker 4:So I listened to the whole of Toxicity back to front about six times on that trip without Chop Suey having any sense that that was the big single. So I guess it did stand out, but it didn't come with any weight, any more weight than any other song.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's interesting. Well, this album I mean I bought this album because I heard this, this single. I mean I just I loved it at the time when it came out um, and I had the album and it it was so intense. I just really could only listen to two or three songs at a time. At that time I just couldn't process any more of it. But I would always listen to to the three singles. I'd go to them and the others were just kind of became impenetrable. It was about, probably about 2010, 2011.
Speaker 1:I started to listen to the whole album in its entirety and it's one of those albums which you you'll probably understand this both you we're kind of lucky enough we can get a guitar and play along to it, and sometimes you can really enjoy an album from listen to it or dance to it or whatever. But if you can play along with it on the guitar, that's another way of enjoying an album. Yeah, I particularly enjoyed doing that with this album. It's incredibly enjoyable to do that, but it took me a long while to be able to digest it in one sitting. It's just so powerful and intense, it's just full on. And they actually said I remember reading john del maine saying that, um, they are. They specifically wanted it to be under 45 minutes because they understood that such heavy music is so hard to digest more of, really, than that type of length so that they were very specifically wanting to keep it short.
Speaker 5:Yeah because they didn't. They wrote, I think, over 40 songs recorded, 30 with the idea to kind of whittle it down to a tight great that's right that's the rubin approach. Why not have the best possible material you can onto the album?
Speaker 3:yeah, um, yeah even though it is shy.
Speaker 5:Just under 45 minutes and we have said earlier we felt it could be shorter. I think that's just because the richness and how powerful, what that, what there is, there is it's so it's.
Speaker 4:I think 35 would be perfect. I think 35. 35 minutes 45 is still long. It wasn't long at that time but that's still quite long for an album, bearing in mind that you know you've got albums coming out in sort of the early 70s or whatever.
Speaker 1:You know it was 30 minutes, 35 minutes and apparently, according to Shavo the bassist, they had to all listen to the album anonymously. They had to all listen to the album anonymously, vote on all the songs anonymously and then give it a grade a, b or c and then they'd pull out those votes, and then the ones.
Speaker 1:All the ones that got the a's were definitely on the album, and then any left. They would then kind of discuss further as but that's how they all did it, because it was like there's just so many good, good songs, we don't know what to put on. So that's how they kind of they graded it. That's brilliant for me. I love that.
Speaker 5:So chop, so obviously got triple a, I would imagine yeah it's like a very good a level shooting here it has it's going to trump um prison song.
Speaker 4:Uh for me I'm voting prison song for me, uh, yeah is that?
Speaker 5:is that a wonderwall syndrome? What is that? What's the reasoning there?
Speaker 4:no, as I said, it's not wonderwall syndrome, because I hadn't heard Chop Sue that many times For me. I just think Prison Song is such an incredible way to open an album.
Speaker 3:It is amazing.
Speaker 4:And I have heard songs about suicide and those kind of. You know the lyrics in Chop Sue, don't get me wrong. I love it, it's brilliant. But on reflection that's the sort of lyric I have heard in other contexts. And I tell you what I have never heard mandatory minimum sentences anywhere, or any of that stuff.
Speaker 5:He's just done it again.
Speaker 4:I know, I know, I know I thought I'd got away with it. Two-one, you're ahead of me. But the thing is, you know there are so many lyrics. You know drug treatment should be increased. You know drug treatment should be increased, all this sort of stuff you know Well done.
Speaker 4:It was about the war on drugs and Bush and all of that stuff. And it just blew my mind. I'm like what am I listening to? Because, because, musically, musically, when I first heard it, when I put that cd and I was like what the hell's happening? But then, lyrically I was, I was just like I've never heard this in in a metal context ever, maybe in like a rap song or something, but I've never heard this in metal ever. And when I got to chop, see, I was like this is also awesome, brilliant. But I I have heard some of these types of lyrics before. So if I'm being forced to make that distinction, I'm going to have to go Prison Song. And also because, you know, I care about how an album opens and ends and I think it's the perfect opening. So for me it's Prison Song.
Speaker 3:Only just, but it is.
Speaker 4:The point being, I'm not being contrarian.
Speaker 5:Fair enough. No, that's valid answers.
Speaker 1:I'm afraid Prison Song isn't going to do any more time because I'm going to vote for Chop Suey.
Speaker 4:I didn't think it would get through.
Speaker 1:It's good to vote. It is great. It's a great opening song. It probably should have been in the semi-final. I don't know who's organising this draw, because they're amateur.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you cocked it up. It's outrageous. You cocked it up, I cocked it up.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the next quarterfinal is Bounce versus X, so bounce is interesting. We've discussed it. Um is a song about group sex, but still managed to turn up on the soundtrack for, uh, the animated film the secret of the secret. Um. Secret life of pets. Animated film the Secret of the Secret Secret Life of Pets. Thank you, for fuck's sake, I'm getting old. My brain is really failing me. So how did that happen?
Speaker 5:I don't know. I mean, I am the Secret Life of Pets Hearing that for the first time and I'm trying to work out if you're bullshitting or whether that was genuine.
Speaker 1:No, I mean it's on the soundtrack.
Speaker 4:Maybe they thought it was just about pogoing and a pogo stick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:That is one brave music supervisor.
Speaker 1:He's made a real cock up, hasn't he.
Speaker 4:He's held up his joke flag.
Speaker 1:I'm hoisting it aloft, joking coming.
Speaker 4:Amusement about to happen. I want X to be about population control. I don't know that it is, I've not managed to work that out, but I would like to think that X. I think it is, isn't it?
Speaker 5:It's something I don't really fully understand. There's something about multiplying at the end, isn't there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't need to multiply. We don't need to multiply Hence the X.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply, we don't need to multiply. Hence the x. Uh, you know, I guess mathematically, but you know we also don't need to nullify. So I, I, I haven't got there, uh, I'm, I'm going, I'm going bounce again because I, I love, I love, I love a bit of pogo origin. How's it go? I'm not I'm not, don't you don't you dare goad me into that sort of thing, uh uh Brett, what are you?
Speaker 1:going to go for. I'm going to go for X. I just love, I love it. It's got a really tight, treble-y intro and then it just opens this huge bassy landscape. It's just, it's got a real nice bit of production. I love it. I'm going to go X. Um, I, I'm going to go X.
Speaker 4:I mean, I'm not. She has so many friends. I've done it again. I mean Three ones.
Speaker 1:He's completed the hat trick Already. I am watching everything I do and say now.
Speaker 4:I'm just not thinking about anything. I'm saying I would like to edit this episode so that I can leave me in telling you both off and then remove me failing to take my own.
Speaker 1:I like it um and just keep me in. Yeah, yeah, yeah clever.
Speaker 5:I think I'm gonna have to go with bounce just because, having watched live. I spent today watching live videos of it and it just looks like, oh, it must be so much fun live. Yeah, it's just's just, it is fun, it is silly. Maybe it hasn't got the weight of X, but I bloody love it.
Speaker 4:Nice.
Speaker 1:Bloody love it. Okay, so Bounce goes through 2-1. Okay, the third quarterfinal is Deer Dance versus Aerials. Come on talk to me. I mean this is.
Speaker 4:It doesn't get any easier. Okay, I know why I'm voting for aerials. It doesn't get any easier. Okay, I know why I'm voting for aerials because if you watch the live footage of them playing aerials at the 2015 concert they did in the main square in, uh, the capital city that we learned the name of earlier, that I forget yaro, yarovan, yarovan, yeah, yarovan. And when they're doing aerials, there's some footage on youtube if you watch it.
Speaker 4:But behind it's behind the drums, and they're doing it in this incredible storm, um, and he's going aerial and you see, shush, don't do it. I'm in the middle of a thing four, I know I've done it four times now. Fuck these guys. For what? For your own game. I hate you both. So he's doing the big drum thing in the middle and this enormous piece of lightning comes down in the distance as they're doing aerials and it's the most atmospheric thing you will see. I can't dissociate aerials from that live performance now because, again, the historical weight of what they're doing and the storm, it's just whoa, and Aerials is just so atmospheric and great.
Speaker 1:What a great tune yeah. Great, great, yeah. Okay, I mean, that's fair enough. Guy, what are you going with Deer Dance?
Speaker 5:I'm going with dear dance, yeah I am pushing all that, oh shit, I've got to make this.
Speaker 1:There's just, there's just that. Why are you going? Well?
Speaker 5:like I think it is the a really good amalgamation of the folk rhythms and melodies and sort of semitonal note shifts. He's doing the way the band all kind of come together. What's your favorite bit? It's the little the way the band all kind of come together.
Speaker 4:What's your favourite bit.
Speaker 5:It's the little bit before the ending when it kind of goes. How does it go? Clever. I nearly did it, you know what if you hadn't been raising your eyebrows on camera? Then I would genuinely have just gone into it. So you sabotaged yourself there.
Speaker 5:I gave myself away. It's the bit where they go really quiet before the last chorus and it's the bit where they go really quiet before the last chorus and it's like a whisper and then it just comes back in. I mean, pop music is best, I think, when it's simple and repetitive and it is one head of a message. But it is told again and again, and again and it just becomes infectious because of how they do it, how they sound together, how they deliver it and the dynamics they have in a band. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1:I love it oh, bloody hell, I thought you were going to make this easy and vote for aerials, because aerials is just, it's a huge song and so and it's a great. Oh, it is absolutely beautiful, and one of the singles uh, dear dancer, does have that incredible lyric how's it going? Pushing all the children, pushing all the children with their semi-automatics. They like to push the week around. I'm trying to do it in no way, trying not to do it.
Speaker 1:I cannot be. Having done a bad tonkin impression, I didn't tank that. Um, I'm gonna go with that joke. Tank though I'm gonna go. Yeah, I'm gonna go with aerials, just because it's just like. Yeah, I think if I had to take one of those two to a desert island aerials is just so beautiful although deer dance probably is more representative I'm torn and I can't help it. I can't help it. Aerials, okay, right, the final quarter, final is forest versus. Oh, the first time of a tired heart Eating seeds is a pastime activity.
Speaker 7:The toxicity of our city, of our city? No, what do you own? The world, how do you own?
Speaker 1:this order. This order, steve. Yeah, toxicity has turned up.
Speaker 4:Finally, I'm going to go with Toxicity straight off the bat. There again another lyric. You will never hear. What's the opening lyric? Something about software 7.0 anyway, yeah, version 7.0 yeah version 7.0, you know compressed, I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's you know again it just opens with that, I'm like nope, no, I heard that before and again I mean I'm having to pick. I love for it, I love in for forest because it keeps going up, it keeps going, it keeps getting higher and higher and higher.
Speaker 4:And I'm thinking his vocal is going to break, his vocal is going to break and it doesn't. But I think toxicity, uh, just wins it for me because it's just a, it's a great, um, it's, it's more melodic and again it's, it's. It's nicely placed on the album to bring a bit of a melody in there it's, it's just a great tune, yeah okay, guy, what are you feeling first turning up?
Speaker 5:yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna echo steve, I think, and go for toxicity. Uh, it reminds me of you. Actually, it's the song that I think we one of the early songs that we used to constantly bring up in band practice too much to our bandmates, sort of like what's he going on about? What are you listening to? Because it is it's crazy, but it is the oh it's amazing, there's a reason why the album's called this.
Speaker 5:I think this song um yeah, is is a very apt clever um centerpiece of it. I don't think it. Um it can go out of the stage.
Speaker 1:It's too important oh no, no, it's way too important. Yeah, it's just three nil, three nil straight through to the semifinals. Okay, so we're already there. We're at the semifinal stage. Stuff's getting tougher. We're into the arena. Semifinals are on um. What do you think about the vocals on this album?
Speaker 4:I think they sound like tom waitss. We've done that.
Speaker 5:No, I think they're great. Actually, today I did notice that they're pretty dry. It's really a raw album. It sounds like even I'm sure there is layering and stuff of the guitars, but the vocals are just. It's just him on a mic going for it.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's a live mic or something like that? It's so immediate.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, I mean, I don't know it, it could be, it could be like a handheld mic and he's just. He's just performing it because it is so and there is no real you know attention to pitch in places, and that's what I love about it it doesn't sound wackily out of tune, it just feels right and it just feels fierce and direct. It's like they're just right in front of you and the vocals are the the perfect example of that so powerful aren't?
Speaker 1:I mean this. I mean he talks about um as coming it to it in a band as being like a, like an activist. He doesn't see himself as as like a classic musician, that sense, and he would say, well, if a guitar can make that noise, why can't my voice? So he'd try and make his voice sound like a classic musician in that sense and he would say, well, if a guitar can make that noise, why can't my voice? So he'd try and make his voice sound like a guitar or add distortion or those type of things. So he would come at it from a totally unique perspective in the way he wanted to sing.
Speaker 1:Uh, just, you know, just extraordinary his vocals on on this album. But he also adds in like a bit of falsetto now and then, or, you know, like straight up, like he's trying to to rap, or and then he then he does do like some actual proper singing as well as like the whole you know thrash metal vocal as well. So he's got a lot of weapons, doesn't he, in his artillery for what he can do at any given point follow-up question what do you think of the guitar playing on this album?
Speaker 1:yeah, I love it. I love it. I mean, obviously I would say that that's a very boring thing. So what I do say more specifically is I like the fact that he's not afraid to go trebly, trebly and not sound super thick and powerful. It's not just massively chunky all the time. He's really happy to have trebly, that trebly, not a weaker sound, but a lighter sound or a clearer, more vulnerable sound.
Speaker 4:That's great because it gives the contrast all right, here's a question then did it took me listening after listening, after listening, and I suddenly noticed that there was something totally omitted from, like completely missed off from the whole record, in in guitar terms. Does anyone want to guess? Oh, um, standard tuning, that I would definitely expect on a metal record. A solo there's not a single solo on the entire right that's perhaps why guy and I like, yeah, not much.
Speaker 5:We're very anti-solo the guy doesn't.
Speaker 4:The guy does not shred at all and you see, I, I, I hate eddie van halen type soloing, but but I enjoy shredding, really mad shredding, when it's like Dimebag Darrell and Pantera doing his thing or whatever it's like, because contextually, that sort of ridiculously fast playing, I really enjoy it. But what I like about this is that he's taken his rhythm guitar thing really seriously, because I don't like it when you've got a one-guitar band, you know like Free, free got Paul Kossoff, and it's like, okay, I'm doing this wonderful rhythm stuff and now there's a solo. So what am I going to do? Well, on the record, I'm going to overdub me playing a solo over my rhythm guitar and when we play live, it's just going to sound really thin because there's gonna try and fill the sound while I play this solo and it's gonna sound like shit
Speaker 4:and he just he has the either. I don't know whether it's that he's not a soloist and he can't play them or it's a choice, but either way I I love the stylistic choice of it's not. You know, they're a solo. I've heard people talk in other podcasts and things and interviews I've said about when he plays solos, but those aren't solos. Those are sort of melodic sections where he's playing the guitar but there isn't a solo, what I would call a guitar solo anywhere on the entire album.
Speaker 1:It's brilliant. You're right, there's no really long. Certainly not a widdly-widdly guitar solo. Yeah, it's beautiful guitar playing.
Speaker 5:The guitar's kind of more akin to a string section to me the staccato sort of thing.
Speaker 3:That's a great point.
Speaker 5:yeah, it's really cinematic and symphonic, and that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Once he put the vibrator down his guitar sound was amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 6:All right, it's me Maka again. It's only time for the bloody semifinals, you know.
Speaker 1:So we're at the semifinal stage. We need to start discussing some. This is going to get hard now, isn't it? We've actually, weirdly, got three of the singles in the semifinals. Having said, it's an amazing album and all the tracks are brilliant, we've just put three singles through the semifinals, hey you don't look at me, I just voted, I'm looking at you.
Speaker 3:I don't look at me, I just voted. I'm looking at you. I did not vote for Chop Suey. I'm looking straight at you. I did not vote for Chop Suey. Oh yeah, that's true. And you're both like why is he?
Speaker 4:being contrarian, no, and I'm about a sterling defence of why I wasn't so you can.
Speaker 3:You two can fight that out.
Speaker 1:It's nothing to do with me, mate good, you're clawing back after losing my credibility, yeah clawing back the cred with the kids, All right. First semi-final is Chop Suey versus Bounce.
Speaker 3:When angels deserve to die in my head Self-righteous suicide.
Speaker 2:I crave when angels deserve to die.
Speaker 7:I went out on a date with a girl a bit late. She had so many friends. I brought my pogo stick just to show her a trick. She had so many friends, I mean that's really straightforward.
Speaker 1:Even I know that's chop suey, let's move on.
Speaker 4:Of course it's chop suey.
Speaker 5:I think so the fun's's over.
Speaker 1:now we're getting into the, the heft into the heart anything you want to say about bounce before it literally does that hang on can you not say the fun's over?
Speaker 4:that's as bad as when Brett says every episode oh, it's getting interesting now. It's like it's like wrap it up. Get to the end the podcast will be no more fun from this point onwards, kids no, yes, no.
Speaker 5:But I think there's a reason why the three singles are here because they have they've managed to do that special thing that bands do when they do crossover on their own terms, without doing you know, something too live and direct, like a cover or something that's, you know, a massive departure from their, their signature sound, and so the album sounds completely different. They've still done the perfect balance of what is them, but they've also opened it up and made it very evocative with the choruses, because they say to themselves this album, they start to write choruses, people would sing back to them. I think all these songs, bounce included, have just great simple hooks that you can sing back at the stage and that's uh, that's amazing. But yeah, I think chop suey has to go through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I'm going for chop suey. It's just three nil for chop suey straight through to the final. Okay, the other, the other semifinal is this is going to be more tricky is is aerials versus toxicity.
Speaker 5:This is tough now because I would genuinely love to sing Deer Dance in the final, because I love it that much. But these two are, yeah, really evenly matched, but um, very evenly matched.
Speaker 1:I mean toxicity. We haven't really spoke about it, but it's just got this incredible drum part on it.
Speaker 5:Oh, it's amazing, the little different rhythms of the sort of it goes between rhythm I. I don't know the technical term for it, I think it's compound rhythms, but it's just, it changes, the groove changes within certain phrases and the drummer. The drummer is incredible in this record, on this record. I think we haven't spoken about that, but like he's, just amazing. If you didn't have that, the rest doesn't work at all.
Speaker 1:No, well, he wasn't the original drummer, was he the drummer smashed up his hand when they first formed and he was out for like six months. They had to get a new drummer and this, and they got john. I didn't know that, um, yeah, he's. Uh, he's. Obviously he's of armenian heritage as well. So they actually were in a. I think they started off in a in a prog band called soil, and then they kind of they, they, I think surgeon and um darren kind of met for a rehearsal studio. Oh, we went to the same school and then they got in Chavo, who was a guitarist at the time and he was Darren's friend, and he said just come in and play bass, because you're just going to do it the right way. And then they went from there. In fact, chavo started off before playing with them as their manager, right.
Speaker 1:He was their manager, yeah, and then he became manager player.
Speaker 5:yeah, manager player player manager, didn't he? Am I right in thinking?
Speaker 1:that he started off.
Speaker 5:Toxicity as well as a song, wasn't it called? Version 7.0 and it kind of got shelved and then do you know, darren?
Speaker 1:came back with it yeah, I've chopped this up, man, let's try this out.
Speaker 5:And they kind of took it from there, the idea that the reason why he mentions that 7.0 line is because at the time a well 5.0 had just come out so I'll think ahead. I'll add some numbers on it's like name checking, mission impossible 15. It's like it's such a funny, so when it comes out it'll be in the future it'll be like whoa, I just that's such a it's a very teenager thing to say and it's such it actually dates it quite badly, but it still sounds. It still sounds cool when he sings it.
Speaker 4:So, um, on that, on that basis, I am going to go for toxicity, I'm going to go early and I'm going to go for toxicity oh it's awesome, steve, I'm going to go for aerials and and I think I really clicked for me once I realized it wasn't about metal aerials, um, and I and I and I was like, oh, okay, that, that that makes a lot more sense. Because I was like, is he talking about satellites, is it whatever? And then, and then I'm like what's the reception?
Speaker 1:on that. Yeah, what is it about then? What is it about? Well, I mean aerials.
Speaker 4:In this case is is like can you?
Speaker 1:Can you get where is Channel 4?
Speaker 4:No, like fairies, like sprites, like beings that float around in the air and S4C, that's the one Classic.
Speaker 5:When you said aerials, I genuinely had a picture of the intro theme tune to Coronation Street All these metal aerials.
Speaker 4:Sorry, it just went where my mind went when you said it's not about metal aerials but I'd always assumed it was, and once I sort of realised it wasn't, the rest of the lyric sort of fit in, and then I started to listen to it more and it's become, like you know, for me the biggest grower on the whole album, I think, and it's the one I it's a great closer, isn't it? And again, yeah, same thing. I love the fact that it. I know there's Arto after it, but basically it's the album closer.
Speaker 4:And again brilliant opener, brilliant closer. So Ariel's gets my vote.
Speaker 1:Okay, which?
Speaker 4:way. Are you going to go then?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry you're going to have to receive this message, Steve, but it's toxicity that's going through.
Speaker 3:Oh, come on On a clear signal.
Speaker 1:It's got to be Toxicity. It's just awesome.
Speaker 5:So we've gone for the most predictable final, really chop, suey and Toxicity.
Speaker 4:I mean to be fair. Aerials would have been better. This should have been shimmy and bounce.
Speaker 1:Listen. There's plenty of episodes of this podcast where we have done the unexpected. This is after bag banging on about how amazing this album is from top to bottom. We have sold ourselves a bit short, I do admit that, but for fuck's sake, we've done enough controversy over the years.
Speaker 5:I do like the fact that when bands put out singles, it tends to be songs that do a certain thing to the widest people. There's a reason why we're here at the final with these songs, I reckon, because a certain thing to the widest people. And you know, there's a reason why we're here at the final with these songs, I reckon because they are perfection when it comes to system of down what they do. Um, so yeah, I think it's really interesting. I mean, I wasn't sure how it's going to go tonight because there are so many album tracks that I genuinely love. But you can't deny.
Speaker 5:There's a reason why the band blew up when they did because of these songs. And here we are oh, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:So we're at the final. Before we get to the final, any other business, anything else we need to mention? What genre are they?
Speaker 4:oh, all sorts. They've been called everything from sort of rock to armenian rock, to heavy rock, to.
Speaker 4:I hate it when they get tagged with the new metal thing, because I yes, there are bands like slipknot who I I think are are brilliant, who get tagged with it, but there are so many. For every slipknot there's a lincoln park and for every you know uh system of a down there's a fucking um, what's the fred durst's band? Then biscuits, you know what I mean? It's like lincoln biscuit, lincoln biscuit, that's it. Uh, it's just. You know that I think the new metal scene was, was just just where it makes me feel physically ill thinking about uh, so please don't link them in. People who link them in with new metal. Take it off wikipedia. Go ahead and hack that out yeah, oh my god, yeah.
Speaker 1:Why have they not split up yet? They haven't done anything since 2005, apart from two singles what do you mean?
Speaker 4:why have they not officially split up, despite being together? Because, because I the impression I've got from interviews I've watched is there are band of brothers who have a really strong uh link, they have a strong political link, and it's not that they've fallen out, but that they, they, they just can't get past that that. Whatever those creative differences are, I think it's entirely creative differences, because I think I think tankin wants to I mean tankin's made a flipping jazz album, do you know what I mean? I think he wants to be, like you say, an activist, a musician of all different kinds, of all these things. And I think I think malakian wants to make metal. And and it's just they can't reconcile no tapeworms.
Speaker 1:Is the jazz album called tapeworms coming out of my ass with the my yes underlined, and that's why there's a tapeworm and it's coming out of my ass in sevenths. Yeah, okay, so there's no other any other business. We're done with that. We get through to the final.
Speaker 6:Ladies and gentlemen, step right. This way, it's the one and only Grandif finale. Yeah, you can do it.
Speaker 1:Our final is Chop Suey versus Toxicity. Steve, talk to me. Can you ask Guy, Steve sing me a riff?
Speaker 4:No, talk to me. Can you ask Guy?
Speaker 1:Steve sing me a riff.
Speaker 4:No, I'm not singing anything. I'm grumpy about this final. These are not the two songs I wanted anywhere near the final.
Speaker 1:What would you have chosen as the final if you'd have got your own way? You?
Speaker 5:stroppy bastard Prison Song and Aerials Okay, so the bookend you are big on the book he just he he does look genuinely, I can get my revenge now for when I had to listen to a revolver and hear eleanor rigby go out round one oh don't get me started. Oh, there's just one. There's one part in what, in one of the songs, that just really does something to me, and that is the Bible sort of verse in the middle eight of Chop Suey Of Chop Suey.
Speaker 1:They do great middle eights. Sorry to interrupt you, they do do incredible middle eights. They can turn on a dime. You think, oh, they've chucked in loads of great ideas in a song and you think if most other bands were like, well, we can retire, happy on that, and they go. No, let's put another idea in and they put something else in.
Speaker 4:Do you know the story about that particular bit, guy? Do you want to tell that story? What happened, what's?
Speaker 5:that. I'm not sure of the exact context, but at some point Serge went to Rick Rubin to say that he hit a block or he didn't know what to happen next or something, or to happen next or something, or they had a section, um right, and they were trying to find lyrics. So, yeah, they reached for a book and opened it on a random page and the lyrics just happened to be perfect for that section and he just he read that line and that was what they literally opened the book.
Speaker 4:It was that, mr father, father bit yeah, and now I think that story is absolute shit. Right because it's classic, just because you haven't got your final no no, listen to it, hear me, I think that story is absolute shit. Right, because it's classic Rick Rubin. Come on, john Lee Cornyn, just because you haven't got your final.
Speaker 3:No, no, listen, hear me out.
Speaker 4:Hear me out. So the story is classic Rick Rubin. It's like, look, I'm this great, crazy producer. And it's like, oh, just pull out the first book off the shelf and something will come to you. And it's like the first time I heard the story I was like that's such a great story. It's classic Rick Rubin. And then I sat and I thought about it for a minute and I'm like, so let's get this straight, right. This is a song about suicide that already has references to angels in it, and the first book that you put off the shelf could have been the Haynes manual for a mini. It could have been like, you know, like Harry Potter. Do you know what I'm saying? It could have been literally cookbook, and what you happened to pick off was the Bible.
Speaker 5:And you managed to get Jesus' last words on the cross to God as he's being forsaken. Steve, nothing is impossible, just improbable. Therefore, it could have happened.
Speaker 4:That is just way it's like. No, Come on.
Speaker 1:I'm not having it. Too convenient. A good story, it is a common songwriting thing that people do.
Speaker 5:They just they'll just read everything's out and um, but yeah you, you might be right, you might be right I think that was like the 95th book.
Speaker 4:They opened and they were like, you know, they were there all night like opening every, every single book they could find going what's this? It's a novel about a snail. No, that's not gonna work, you know, whatever. And it's like eventually he gets like the bible and it's oh, this will do it's like pulling out the yellow pages never let the truth get in the way of a good story, but
Speaker 1:there you go it is a great story it's.
Speaker 4:I've ruined it for myself.
Speaker 1:I did love it the first time yeah, it was a beautiful romantic end to the podcast yeah, my commotionliness destroyed.
Speaker 4:I'm so irritated by this final, I felt some curmudgeonliness was needed.
Speaker 1:The irritation rippling off of you at this final.
Speaker 5:Having said that, the end of toxicity does also do something to me thinking about it in terms of when they just throw in that. Ha Ha Ha.
Speaker 2:Ah, you did it Finally. Well done Steve. There he goes, keeping. Ha ha ha. Ah, you did it Finally. Well done Steve.
Speaker 1:There he goes, keeping him long enough, keeping him long enough and he will fall into the riff trap.
Speaker 4:He's blown it. He's blown it. Listeners, there you go.
Speaker 1:He's looking at him. Oh, look at his gut. He's slumped in his chair.
Speaker 5:His credibility sliding in the episode I lasted longest. I surely did. That's not the point.
Speaker 1:You did Stamina. That's not the point. Yeah, that is true. That was a tantric performance. When it goes on Pirates of the Caribbean at the end.
Speaker 5:Bloody love, it Sucks galloping off Toxicity yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, yeah, I abilities to just swing. They're heavy, heavy as fuck, it's not. Their intensity is not just that, they're heavy and they're metal to the max, which they are. And he's got all these, you know these gears in his voice. And then the guitars are amazing. It's the fact they can swing as well. They've got groove. It can make you kind of tap your toe, swing your ass as well, and it's that ability to switch up all of those emotions they can stir in you and keep it up at like nine, ten out of ten on the on the intensity ometer. Yeah, it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1:So it is a relentless album and like I do have to take breathers from it, I mean I've loved listening to this album, um, getting into it. As I said, it took me ages to be able to listen to the whole thing back to back. Even now I have to take a brief pause. But it's just, it's extraordinary. I mean this band reminds you, guy, of the Beatles, steve, tom Waits. For me it's obvious what they remind me of it's ABBA. I mean it's obvious, isn't it, why they remind me of ABBA? It's just straight up, because you put them on, that act on, and it just takes you away. It just changes your mood. They just have the power to just create this universe. You just slide into it. They've just which, which, uh, you know, um, benny and bjorn could do as well.
Speaker 4:So is it the flamboyant outfits?
Speaker 1:it's the flares. Basically that does it. Yeah, that sort of really reminds me, yeah, and, you know, also discussing which one you think is the prettiest as well. Oh yeah, the one with the blonde hair, the brown hair, that's, you know.
Speaker 4:Which one of System of a Down would you do? Sister of a Down, sister of a Down, sister of a Down, which is an all-female System of a Down tribute act, and I'd do all of them they're very attractive.
Speaker 5:Sister of a Down. If that hasn't happened, it's happening now a nun rock album. Come on guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great lovely stuff, beautiful, beautiful. So yeah, just that ability to just create this incredibly intense universe and to just see it through. But the ideas are just chock-block. Both of these songs are chock-full of ideas and they both have like kind of codery sections which you're thinking, how can this get any better? And they chuck something else in. There's just so many layers. I mean I love the Chop Sue. The vocals, the backing vocals you got coming in on Chop Sue are so intense. Where he's singing it almost becomes the melody because he's singing it so loud as well was it?
Speaker 4:what was it called originally? What's the original title?
Speaker 1:of chop suey. Yeah, it's suicide. That's what we call rolling suicide yeah, literally, yeah.
Speaker 4:It literally says yeah. Rolling on suicide.
Speaker 1:At the beginning they're like no, you can't call it that yeah, and the basis thinks they called it chop suey, because it's hey, chopping suicide in half, chop suey. I mean, it's like a, it's a pun so bad it wouldn't even get on my intro, which I admit was terrible, but I think Malakian wanted to put it in because it's like, oh, make them chaps like in a gangster film. If you really study their lyrics you're right. I mean, dada-esque is the way to. Did he say Dada-esque, was that it?
Speaker 4:Yes, but I don't think this is so much because it does have a a strong subject matter, which which is suicide and actually I think so, whilst whilst they changed the title because the record company were like you just can't call it that I think actually suicide would have been too on the nose as a title, just because it just too unsubtle. I like the fact that you have to work a little bit with some of the lyrics and the titles. Um, so actually chop suri. I think is is a better title, because you're going what?
Speaker 5:what? But definitely from a label perspective you'll get way more radio play out of it, of course yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But Toxicity is incredible as well. And the drums part, which is really famous, comes from. The bassist came up with the riff and he's like I know he's trying to explain it to the drummer he needs to play it like this. And the drummer's getting pissed off is oh, for fuck's sake, stop fucking telling me to play drums. He's like oh, do you mean like this, do you? And just does like a kind of a parody of what he thinks he's like yeah, that's it perfect.
Speaker 1:That's what the drums were, that's how they got them, so it's. You know it's. All those things can make a great record, but sometimes trying to take the piss is what works best.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely right, we've asked him how do we vote?
Speaker 1:yeah, we've got to vote. Um, I'm gonna go and ask Steve which of these songs?
Speaker 4:that he hates to ask me first to vote, and I'm voting for Chop Sue okay, as I say, as you know, I'm irritated by this final, uh, the idea of were you, I didn't realise this shut up, uh the um.
Speaker 4:The idea of chop su winning this is irritating to me. However, I am going to vote for it. I'm sorry that that takes the tension out of it, because it does mean that's going to win um, but but I'm gonna, because it's it's hairline between the two for me. I'm gonna vote for it, simply on because I have to pick something. The reason, the fact that it's the reason that system of downs fans, downs fans, um troll surge. Do you know why they troll him and why it drives him absolutely mental?
Speaker 1:no, why? What do they tell him about?
Speaker 4:because fans come up to him like if he's sitting having a cup of tea or something and like a quiet cup of coffee in like a restaurant or something, fans will come up behind him and go wake up and he's like what? And he said? He said I know that's funny, but I really really need people to stop doing it because, because it's doing, it's really messing with my blood pressure. Wake up.
Speaker 4:Oh god, that's awful yeah so, and it's like he does, it's like this whole thing that just won't go away. That's been going on for years, and I love the fact he's created a sort of hell of his own making there. So so I'm gonna vote for chop so, because I can't pick between them, so I'm gonna go for that reason alone okay, guy, I was hoping it was going to be tense and exciting I was actually going to go for, on reflection, whilst you, whilst you guys, have been talking toxicity and that's genuinely so.
Speaker 5:I mean, I love Chop Suey but there's always something about toxicity that it just takes me back to when we were talking about it, back in when it would have come out, I imagine, and just the sort of that guitar intro, the sort of again it does what Chop Suey does, but in a very different way. I find it darker because Chop Suey has, you know, thinking about it. Chop Suey has an amazing kind of pop chorus but Toxicity just has an unrelenting thing and it's the centrepiece of the album.
Speaker 5:I think it's the perfect title for for the, for a body of work. I think it's a uh, an amazing, amazing, um for sure song. And yeah, yeah, um, it's just, it is just unrelenting and it well, just when you think you know what's coming next, like chop suey, but in a more aggressive way, it just, it just goes. We're going left, we're going this way now. Yeah, okay, cool. No, we're going that way, okay, what the hell's going on? By the end of it, you just want to lie down and that's the best feeling you can have. Listen to rock music oh, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:I mean just everything. I think I'd have been happy if anything had won. Um, this competition tonight, steve obviously was very specific, um, but I mean, I mean if, if something has to win, it's got to be chop suey, hasn't it? I mean it's just extraordinary. Guitar solo.
Speaker 7:Wake up, Grab a brush and put a little make-up. Undiscuss the fadeaway, the shake-up. Why'd you leave the keys up on the table? Here you go, create another table. You wanted to Grab a brush and put a little make-up. You wanted to. Undiscuss the fadeaway, the shake-up? You wanted to. Why'd you leave the keys up on the table? You wanted to. Why'd you leave the kiss up on the table? You wanted to. Why? I don't think you trust In my self-righteous suicide. I cry when angels deserve to die Bye.