It's to its detriment that this CD is being compared to System of a Down. Get over it people. It's not a SOAD release. Judging it on it's own merits and not as an extension of an already established band is the way to go, and on that basis this is without doubt one of the stronger debuts that has come out of this genre of music this year.
The vocals are strong, the material is well crafted and the attention to melody is to the fore. As a stand alone release Darren Malakian and John Dolmayan have created a body of work they can be proud of.

Amazing, but in a bad way im afraid. As a big fan of System I was hoping that this would be an excellent listen, I was wrong. Yet again a band I love prove that when they part, for whatever reason, the parts are just not as good as whole. The sooner System get their act back together the better. Im amazed by just how bad this album really is, Daron should save his voice for the odd interlude or song on an album as a whole album of his voice gets really irritating. I must admit I was also expecting something far heavier than this too. Daron has written some amazing, memorable riffs in his time and all I can hope is that he is saving them up for the next System album. As for the lyrics, well they seem to be just obvious rhymes, devoid of any sort of meaning, not that a song needs to have meaning, but they just seem like inane rantings to me. I've given it 2 stars basically because I dont have the heart to give it one, but make no mistake, this is poor quality stuff, shame, but there we go.

After listening to this album... very reluctantly as I'm a massive SOAD fan and i just felt like none of that power or edge was left in this album. The lead singer has nothing clever, thoughtful or particularly insightful to say. The world is over and random swearing doesn't make a decent album. If you love SOAD check out Serj's powerful and reminiscent debut album. I wouldn't recommend this album.