If Green Day’s vile American Idiot built political commentary out of Lego, Mezmerize snaps it together out of Duplo (you know, that double-sized unswallowable Lego for toddlers and retarded kids). The album’s first single, B.Y.O.B., is the kind of scathing indictment of the military industrial complex that’s usually reserved for lofty literary media like bumper stickers and picket signs. Yes, we know the war is bullshit. Everyone knows the war is bullshit, even the rednecks and Republicans that pretend it isn’t bullshit. We all love to make fun of conservative politicians for speaking in platitudes, but how about lyrics like “why don’t presidents fight the war / why do they always send the poor”? Wow, slam-dunk. Now do the one about the Air Force holding a bake sale. What’s worse, the video for the song centers on the most insipid of egotistical metal clichés: the band playing to a bunch of invigorated youths as fascist police try to smash up their concert. Sorry, morons, your jackboot martyrdom is not forthcoming. You have to be hurtful to the system before you get squelched, and as it stands, you’re still funneling money to Republicans (more on that later).
B.Y.O.B. is dumb, but the rest of the album doesn’t fare much better. “Radio/Video” is The Replacements’ “Seen Your Video,” a mere twenty years too late. This song, along with “Violent Pornography,” really illustrates System of a Down’s distaste for mainstream pop culture, to the extent that impressionable young listeners might forget that System of a Down are turning the exact same tricks as any other whores on Earth. Listen to this, teenager: The Sony Corporation is just shilling System of a Down’s rebellion to extract money from the demographic who doesn’t buy Destiny’s Child records (both artists are beholden to Sony’s Columbia Records). Regardless of System of a Down’s clumsy political posturing, they are an integral part of the system of extracting money from stupid teenagers (you) and giving it to old, rich white Republicans. Am I one of those awful idiots who hates all major-label music because of this? No, of course not, those guys are complete pussies. I just like pointing it out to youth-addled stoners who think they’re supporting something alternative.