System Of A Down - Mezmerize • CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

minutes. Everything on Mezmerize hits and splits with viciously honed purpose -- even the exaggerated comedy of Tankian's idiot-Caruso la-la-la's in the mash-up thrash of "B.Y.O.B." and the overdubbed chorale of what sounds like a dozen ditsy Bjorks in "This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm on This Song," inexplicably chirping, "Gonorrhea Gorgonzola." But if there is a specific thematic outrage or a bigger forward-metal objective connecting Mezmerize and whatever's on Hypnotize -- both co-produced by Malakian and Rick Rubin -- you have to wait to find out. It's like getting a one-two punch in six-month installments.

The upside: You have plenty of time to drink in the strangeness. Compared to this infuriated, intricately detailed delirium, System of a Down's previous album, 2001's Toxicity, was classicist-metal insurgence. In its breakneck-suite song construction and relentless, accusatory vigor, Mezmerize instead rants and rips like a bizarre, gripping compression of the Mars Volta's attention-deficit disorder on Frances the Mute and the operatic contempt of the Mothers of Invention's 1968 hippie-culture broadside We're Only in It for the Money. Yes, that is an extreme comparison. But this is extreme diatribe.

Considering the lethal, obsessive precision of the music on Mezmerize -- Malakian was so determined to get it right that he also played bass on all but three songs -- he and Tankian are often blunt and crude in their mockery, as if they're starting to run out of faith in elevated heavy-rock discourse. America's military-industrial aristocracy runs amok, with big cigars and bigger cocks, in the Freudian mosh pit of "Cigaro." The sheep at the bottom of the ladder, content with reality TV and fifteen-minute dreams of celebrity, get it howitzer-style as well in "Radio/Video": "Hey, man, look at me rockin' out/I'm on the radio/Hey, man, look at me rockin' out/I'm on the video." That's practically the song's entire lyric, and, frankly, it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: American Idol and Maroon 5 clips are hardly a major threat to the republic.

But at its reckless best, which is a lot, Mezmerize is thrilling confrontation, a graphic reflection of a nation teari

On "This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm on This Song," Serj Tarkian may sing "There's nothing wrong with me/There's something wrong with you" convincingly, but anyone who's heard System of a Down's frenetic metal-funk and hyper wacko singer knows that there's definitely something wrong with every one of these guys.