Reviews

Had Tankian sold out and resorted to trite flattery to endear a crowd? He backed up his apparent compliment by giving us the first ever live rendition of one of his new songs - the spiky and deranged Money.

Or maybe he'd cottoned on to the fact that us Mancunians would have no problem appreciating one of the more challenging solo offerings from his album, Elect the Dead.

To be fair, the charismatic System of a Down frontman appeared to be having a whale of time and he did hurl the odd choice insult at George Bush, but even this didn't seem quite right. 

System Of A Down fans are used to being blasted at point blank range with uncomfortable issues tightly bound with raging guitar riffs. Songs like Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition bubbled along energetically, but will always compare unfavourably with the manic hyper-intensity of anything that SOAD had to offer.

Still, it would be difficult to fault the musicianship of Tankian's current bandmates. He's assembled a quality line-up that features Primus guitarist Larry Lalonde and percussive powerhouse Troy Zeigler.

But with just one album's worth of material to play they were only on stage for just over an hour, though Tankian did pull a couple of covers out of his bonkers stovepipe hat.

His version of Girl by The Beatles was a quirky little peanut butter and jelly sandwich of a tune - on the face of it totally unpalatable but closer inspection revealed an ingenious mash up of the familiar and the totally weird. And his cover of Dead Kennedys’ Holiday in Cambodia was a great punky little rock out moment.

But it was all just a bit unsatisfying. As a solo artist, Serj Tankian is like a promisingly presented nouvelle cuisine dish with all the right cutting edge ingredients but just in need of a few more calories.