WINNIPEG - Talk about a mesmerizing night of music.
Last night's System of a Down show at the MTS Centre featured three bands playing heavy, challenging, experiential metal that both thrilled and bewildered a crowd of 8,000.
Taking the stage an hour late after being delayed by Hurricane Rita at LAX in Los Angeles, SOAD showed why they are one of the most unique mainstream metal acts in North America with a jarring display of hardcore thrash mixed with Middle Eastern textures inspired by their Armenian roots.
From the first notes of intro Soldier Side the floor was a swirling mass of bodies and fists. The intensity was cranked to eleven when they launched into the war-bashing B.Y.O.B., the first single off their latest album Mezmerize.
Frontman Serj Tankian shared vocal duties with guitarist Daron Malakian, who handled the grittier side of things while ripping through the intricate guitar lines that make up their socio-political manifests.
Bassist Shavo Odajian and drummer John Dolmayan were put to work keeping up with the abrupt pauses, fractured rhythms, tempo variations and time signature changes that make up the group's arsenal.
The set was heavy on material from Mezmerize and their 2001 breakthrough Toxicity, although they threw in a few numbers off their 1998 debut.
At press time the band were about half-way through their 90-minute set getting the crowd airborne with Bounce.
Before SOAD, The Mars Volta tore through a one-hour set featuring only four songs of absurdist avant-garde prog-metal and cerebral psychedelia.
The Texas group performed as an eight-piece, including three percussionists and two keyboardists, but the main focus was on vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, formerly of emo-heroes At the Drive In. They may have ditched the sound of their former band, but it's nice to see they kept their famous afros.
Bixler-Zavala was a madman on stage howling in English and Spanish while convulsing like the bastard child of Iggy Pop. Rodriguez-Lopez stood beside him at centre stage tearing through solos and thrashing his guitar above a roaring wall of drums, horns and effects.
Each song was its own sprawling mini-epic, starting slowly and building to a cacophonous climax before calming down to a dull roar and rising again. For a similar effect smash a brick into your head, relax with a therapeutic massage then beat yourself stupid.
As strange as some might have found The Mars Volta, opening act Hella were just as mind bending.
The Sacramento, Calif. duo of Spencer Seim and Zach Hill, on guitar and drums respectively, added a bassist and keyboardist-guitarist to expand on their experimental noise rock.
Without following the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, Hella were anything but linear, venturing into adventurous spastic freak outs of thrash, surf, electronica, jazz and no wave anchored by Hill's out-of-control non-stop drumming.
SUN RATING: 4.5 out of 5
