Mezmerize

Mezmerize, the band's fourth album, came out on American Recordings and Columbia on 17 May 2005 as CK 90648, the first half of a two-part work completed by Hypnotize in November. The band began writing and rehearsing in North Hollywood in January 2004 and recorded at the so-called Houdini Mansion in Laurel Canyon, where Rick Rubin had made the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Rubin put the number of songs they cut at about 35; Daron Malakian felt that handing listeners twenty-five songs at once would be too much to digest, so the set was split into two records of 35 to 40 minutes each. Rubin and Malakian produced it, David Schiffman and John O'Mahony engineered it, Andy Wallace mixed it and Vlado Meller mastered it, with string arrangements by Serj Tankian and Mark Mann. Tankian and Malakian share the vocals, and the artwork uses paintings by Malakian's father, the artist Vartan Malakian. It entered the Billboard 200 at number one, selling 453,000 copies in its first week, the band's biggest week to date. According to Sony Music Japan, which released it here, it also topped Oricon's international chart, one of fourteen countries where it reached number one. "B.Y.O.B." won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 48th awards, and the album has been certified double platinum by the RIAA. The Japanese edition came out on 18 May 2005 as SICP-682. The running order here is the original's as printed.