Nearly four years after topping the US album charts with Toxicity, the only band ever to have made anyone think, 'Armenia rocks!' return with a typically feisty piece of multiple personality disordered, quirk-metal.
BYOB is everything a System Of A Down fan could have wished for, with manic, almost operatic, speed metal verses and crazily catchy, poppy choruses before a mosh-tastic finale that drives home the song's message for anyone who might have been dizzy enough to have missed it.
Message? Oh yes, BYOB - aka Bring Your Own Bomb - is as Bush-baiting as you'd expect ("Everybody's going to the party, have a real good time / Dancing in the desert, blowing up the sunshine... Why don't Presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?"), although hyperbolically complaining about living "in a Fascist nation" is perhaps a little insulting to those who really have lived under such oppression. Still, BYOB cements the truth that System Of A Down don't sound like anyone else. Let's hope that the two forthcoming albums, Mezmerize and Hypnotize, are as good.
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