System Of A Down released Hypnotize in the United States on November 22, 2005. Their fifth studio album completed the two-part project that began with Mezmerize that May. Produced by Rick Rubin and Daron Malakian, the records came from the same sessions, with a release schedule that gave each installment its own time with listeners.
The lead single, “Hypnotize,” featured Malakian and Serj Tankian sharing lead vocals. Their exchanges were central to the song and to the larger writing approach behind both albums.
Malakian considered those vocal combinations as he wrote. Recalling the two records in a 2020 Guitar World interview, he explained that he developed particular passages for Tankian, himself or both singers together. Guitar parts, vocal ideas and drum patterns belonged to an arrangement he worked out before bringing a song to the others. That helps explain why the two voices work as parts of the composition: the handoffs were already built into the writing.
Separating the albums was another deliberate decision about how the music would be heard. Malakian told WIRED in 2005 that listeners carrying enormous MP3 collections already faced more music than they could absorb. He wanted to give the songs a chance to become familiar. “This way, we're giving people time to develop a relationship with a smaller batch of songs,” he said. The months between releases were part of that plan.
The division didn't mean Malakian had reserved one kind of song for each record. In a 2005 Metal Hammer interview, he pushed back when the interviewer heard Hypnotize as heavier and less focused on choruses than its companion. The songs had been written together, he explained, and he hadn't sorted them according to how immediately catchy they were.
That breadth left room for “Holy Mountains,” with its connection to the Armenian genocide, and the absurd combinations of “Vicinity of Obscenity.” Tankian described the band's concern with the genocide as rooted in their own families, while his sense of humor embraced unlikely connections between unrelated things. Malakian explained “Lonely Day” much more simply: it came from a sad day spent alone at home. In the same interview, he argued that the band's music needed to accommodate the different moods and concerns that make up a person. Those songs put public grief, private loneliness and outright silliness within the same 12-track album.
The physical release reinforced the connection to Mezmerize. Vartan Malakian, Daron's father, created the artwork, and the packaging was designed so the two albums could join together into a continuous presentation. The sequencing made a similar connection. Mezmerize began with “Soldier Side – Intro”; Hypnotize ended with the full “Soldier Side.” A listener following both releases reached the completed song at the end of the second record, closing a musical idea introduced at the start of the first.
Hypnotize debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with roughly 320,000 copies sold in its first U.S. week. Mezmerize had also entered at No. 1, giving System Of A Down two chart-topping album debuts in 2005.
