Live And In The Flesh
System of a Down - June 19, 2015
Toronto, ON
After fifteen years of waiting to catch these guys live, the moment was finally upon us. System of a Down had brought themselves out of a hiatus back in 2010 and were making the odd appearance throughout the festival circuits over the years. The Wake Up The Souls Tour in 2015 was their first headlining run in years. This tour proved to be something the band held close to their hearts, as it was the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide which saw roughly 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire government in 1915. Seeing as how all of the band members were of Armenian descent, I could understand why they were bringing awareness to their heritage. Governments today still do not fully recognize the genocide that had taken place. Their Wake Up The Souls Tour only consisted of two Canadian dates at the very end of its run, a festival stop at the Amnesia Rockfest up in Montebello, Québec, and a solo stop at the Molson Amphitheatre down in Toronto. We weren't quite sure about hitting the entire festival up for the entire weekend, so we decided to take on their Toronto stop instead. Having attended plenty of shows at the Amphitheatre in the past, we knew the venue would be a perfect place to finally see them live.
The Friday of the show finally came and we made our way down to the city of Toronto. The weather was gorgeous and we couldn't have asked for better driving conditions. Mid-twenties and sunny for the next two days! We decided to pick up a rental for the tour and ended up with a Chevy Equinox. Nice and spacious and seemed to handle well on the highway. It wasn't the most economical on fuel but the $30 a day rental fee couldn't be beat. After making the five hour trek down to Bradford just north of Toronto, we stopped into our buddy's place to take a break from the road before heading down to the venue. We were advised that the parking situation at the venue was poor, and that we would have better luck parking over at BMO Field and walking over to Ontario Place. After getting stuck in the middle of a busy Toronto intersection and cutting off a stretch Hummer limo we finally parked our vehicle. Sadly the parking fees cost us just as much as our rental did which was insane. $30 to park your vehicle was absurd, but what do you do when you're coming in from out of town? We locked up our vehicle and started to make our way over to the venue. We noticed that there was a lineup of about a thousand people long waiting to get in, which had stretched across Lakeshore over the bridge and into our parking lot, it was insane. We couldn't believe they would expect everyone to wait that long to get into the venue, so we joined a mob of concert-goers and decided to head straight up to the head of the line. It wasn't long before we made our way into Ontario Place while the rest were stuck in the never-ending lineup, luckily for them they had finally decided to open up a few more gates to increase the intake of attendees.
Entering the venue we were greeted by plenty of beer carts and water salespeople, $15.50 for a single 750ml beer, or $10 a tallboy, and $4 for a litre of water, which was surprising. I couldn't imagine spending $60 on four beer, I wasn't even able to stomach buying one at that cost. Shortly after hitting up the closest bathroom we decided to make our way over to the merch tents to check out what the band had for sale. There wasn't a whole lot to choose from, mainly just t-shirts, hoodies and a ball cap, and unfortunately no posters. I didn't bother picking up any of the t-shirts that were going for $40 a piece. The hoodies going at $80 weren't all that different than the shirts they would have been selling 15 years ago as it simply consisted of the band's self-titled album artwork.
Toronto, ON
We settled into our seats which were situated at the end of row F in section 304. Not quite center stage but they were close enough. We managed to get seats below the venue's canopy, thankfully there wasn't a cloud in the sky and rain wasn't even an issue. After waiting around for about an hour we were introduced to a comedian who started to get us warmed up a bit before the show. At first we thought he was your ordinary soundcheck guy, but he later explained that the band had brought him along as their opening act. He went by the name Craig Gass, and he wasn't out there for much longer than 20 minutes. He mentioned that the band really enjoyed coming up and playing for the Toronto crowd, so much that they had planned on recording this night's entire show for their very first live album that is due to be released. The crowd went wild over the news. He let us know that he would be helping us perform a bit of a soundcheck with the mics to ensure that they were picking up the proper sound from the crowd. He busted right into the chorus to Chop Suey! while the crowd chimed in without hesitation. You could tell right away that this would be a pretty spectacular night.
9:00pm finally came and System of a Down made their way to the stage as the lights went out. The fans were going crazy as we all knew we were in for a fantastic performance, especially if they were willing to record it for their first live album. They started off their set with Mind, heading right back to their debut self-titled album from 1998. Unfortunately they only teased us with the first few lines of that track before the diving right into Deer Dance, one of my favourites off of their 2001 Toxicity album. This was definitely one of the songs I was hoping to hear live, and to have them play it right out of the gates was fantastic. The crowd was already belting out each and every word of their songs and the atmosphere was electric. I looked around and the sea of 16,000 screaming fans was incredible. They sure could bring out a crowd in Toronto, and without a doubt one of the most appreciative crowds I've witnessed down in the big city.
System of a Down touched on pretty well every single track I was looking forward to seeing, from Aerials to Soil which was followed up by Darts. I was loving all of their older material that we had grown up listening to all throughout high school. Not having listened to them in a while, I was surprised at how easy the lyrics would all come back after each and every song. Serj's growling was particularly on point all night long. I couldn't believe how bang-on they were with their sound live. By the end of the night we had heard practically their entire self-titled, Toxicity, and Mezmerize albums only skipping over a few of the tracks. A handful of Hypnotize tracks were also thrown into the mix before they wrapped up their 27 song setlist with Toxicity and Sugar to top it all off. We found out they even treated us to one of their more rare tracks from one of their demo tapes - Honey. The show seemed to go by so fast, we couldn't believe that they had played as many songs as they had. I could understand why they wanted to wrap it up, as they needed to keep it within the album's time allotment. By far one of the heaviest shows I had been to in a while and it seemed to rejuvenate my love for System that much more. I wouldn't hesitate to catch these guys live time and time again as long as they keep loving what they do.