lizardtail wrote:
Teh lyrics to BYOB are just a huge rip-off of War Pigs.. usually SoaD's lyrics are interesting and original.. I loved the track which went, "Pushing little children with their fully automatics.. they like to push the weak around!" but there's nothing that matches it on Mesmerize.
Yeah, this time around Daron wrote 90% of the lyrics. Serj basically wrote the song "Question!" and Daron did everything else. This album is apparently very personal to him. Radio/Video comes off as cheesy lyrically, but it's apparently about his two best friends from when he was a kid, friends he hasn't seen since he was 10. That takes away from the cheesiness a bit. Old School Hollywood is about a celebrity baseball game Daron was involved in a few years ago where celebs like Tony Danza basically shunned him, and Lost In Hollywood is an extension of that song from a different perspective.
Daron just isn't the poet that Serj is, he's more straightforward and simple in his lyrical approach. Serj is better, but in the end the music and the way the lyrics are sung is what makes them so unique.
As for what genre they should be placed in, that I can't answer. When you think of a genre like power metal you can say band A sounds like band B and C and so on. With System Of A Down you can't do that, they defy categorization just like a band like Tool does. They're too much of everything and not enough of one thing to really be pigeonholed into a genre.
