Double Down
By Todd Martens

Billboard
May 17 2005

Few acts can trot out a Peter Jennings newsreel before a concert and
have a hard-rock audience of 6,000 erupt in cheers. For fans of System
Of A Down, however, a pre-show report on genocide is as fitting as
a guitar solo.

It is a Sunday night in late April, and System Of A Down is staging its
third hometown concert to benefit human rights and genocide awareness
organizations. The group is about to embark on a world tour, and
the Los Angeles crowd has gathered not to see the band off or hear
a glimpse of its upcoming material. Instead, the atmosphere at the
Gibson Amphitheater (formerly Universal Amphitheater) is that of a
family reunion, where high schoolers and adults stand and cheer a
heavy metal guitar line — or an ABC news clip from 1999 — all in
the name of Armenian heritage.

Fans drape the Armenian flag over the balcony, and the mosh pit near
the front of the stage is a blur of red, blue and orange as fans
brandish flags in the crush. A fan in the back yells “f*** Turkey”
— a remark directed at the country that perpetrated the Armenian
genocide of 1915 — and the audience explodes in cheers that rival
anything the band received at Ozzfest in 2002.

“This band didn’t start to change the world,” guitarist/songwriter
Daron Malakian later says from the stage. “This band didn’t start to
change your mind. This band started just to make you ask questions.”

System Of A Down’s ethnic appeal and political directness are not
the typical qualities of today’s megastars, and that says nothing
of the band’s music: a metal-laced mesh of off-the-wall rhythms and
whiplash shifts in direction.

The American/Columbia act has sold nearly 6 million albums in the
United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The group’s 2001 effort,
“Toxicity,” is its most successful so far, scanning 3.5 million copies.

On May 17, System Of A Down will release the first half of its most
ambitious project, a double-album that will be issued as two separate
discs — “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” — nearly six months apart.

The first disc, “Mezmerize,” was introduced in March with first
single “B.Y.O.B.,” a thrashy, Black Sabbath-inspired anti-war anthem.
The song is highly critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East. (“And
we don’t live in a fascist nation,” Malakian sings with far from
subtle sarcasm.)

Loaded with four-letter words, it is not the obvious choice for a
radio cut. Singer/songwriter Serj Tankian says the band chose the
song with hesitation.

“It’s such a heavy and aggressive song, and we didn’t want a political
song as our first single,” he says. “But it’s so powerful and so
different from everything else on the radio, we thought we could
get away with it, even though we don’t want to be pigeonholed as a
political band.”

Yet Tankian can’t escape politics. As the co-founder of Axis of
Justice, the activist Web site he runs with Audioslave’s Tom Morello,
Tankian is the most politically active member of System Of A Down.

Mild-mannered and articulate, Tankian chooses his words with the
conscientiousness of a scholar. He shows up for an interview in a
suit, while Malakian slouches next to him in jeans and a T-shirt. In
the words of producer Rick Rubin, Malakian is the “darker, more aggro
character, and Serj is the poet.”

“The word ‘politics’ is a funny thing,” Tankian says. “A lot of
people say, ‘Hey, I’m not political,’ and they don’t realize that,
in today’s world, economics, politics, class struggle and social
structure, are all tied together. It affects us directly, whether we
like it or not, or whether we want to pay attention to it or not. Our
lives are political, and System Of A Down is a band that talks about
politics and has very strong points of view.”

Like all of its previous work, the act recorded the albums with Rubin,
who signed the band to his American Recordings imprint in 1997. If
there is a noticeable difference between “Cigaro” and past System Of
A Down songs, it is that the first voice one hears is that of Malakian
and not Tankian.

Tankian is still the group’s primary vocalist, and Malakian has always
composed essentially all of the band’s music — coming off as hard
rock’s answer to Frank Zappa. Yet “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” sees
Malakian writing more lyrics than he has before. Malakian even splits
vocal duties more evenly with Tankian and sings lead on a few cuts.

Tankian and Malakian run their own record labels, but Tankian’s Axis
of Justice Web site is becoming increasingly more visible, and in 2003
he recorded an album of largely experimental instrumental music with
Armenian musician Arto Tuncboyaciyan. With Malakian taking on a more
active vocal role, one gets the impression that Tankian is taking a
step or two back from band.

“I’m starting to compose music for films,” Tankian says, “and I don’t
like being committed to one thing, whether it’s the singer of a band
or one band in general. System Of A Down is part of what I do, but
it’s just part of what I do. I don’t define it, nor does it define me.”

Malakian, however, notes that only those outside of the band’s inner
circle will be surprised to hear him sing more. “I’ve always been
vocally involved with System Of A Down, not necessarily as a singer,
but I’ve written a lot of the melody lines and the vocal patterns.
When I wrote something before, I had Serj in my head, but this time
I had both of us in my head.”

In discussing the new albums, Malakian and Tankian always refer to
them as a single project. To the band, “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize”
are one album released in two parts, with both topping off somewhere
between 35 and 40 minutes.

“You don’t have a bunch of kids dropping acid like they used to,”
Malakian says. “You can’t just release double albums and expect
people to sit there and devote their time to it. Our songs are tough
to digest, and I would feel really uncomfortable handing someone a
CD with 25 songs staring them in the face.”

Following a 10-city U.S. “guerrilla tour” that began April 25, the
group will head overseas to perform at European festivals, and then
launch an arena tour of North America with the Mars Volta in late
summer. It will be System Of A Down’s first large-scale U.S. tour
since appearing on the Ozzfest bill in 2002.