Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
August 18, 2005, Thursday
MUSIC Political System Early exposure to real-life evil still fuels
band
Evelyn McDonnell Knight Ridder Newspapers
Among the myriad norm deviations that make System of a Down one of
the millennium’s strangest musical acts is the fact that a holocaust
indirectly spawned the group.
>>From 1915-23, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the
Turkish government in a horrific campaign of massacres, deportation,
starvation and torture. For System, this brutal history is something
more than prime heavy metal song fodder: It’s personal.
“Because of the genocide, Armenians scattered,” System bassist Shavo
Odadjian explains over the phone from his Los Angeles home. A number of
the displaced, including 4-year-old Odadjian and his future bandmates,
eventually made their way to America’s 20th-century promised land:
Hollywood. System of a Down is probably the first group whose members
all attended an Armenian-American academy.
Odadjian, guitarist/singer Daron Malakian, singer Serj Tankian and
drummer John Dolmayan all speak Armenian. And while their music
isn’t filled with Armenian instruments, their shared ethnic history
undoubtedly unites them – and shapes their distinct worldview.
They’re a thrash band that throws in operatic trills. Progressive in
their musical tastes and politics, they’ve shot a video with Michael
Moore. On “Mesmerize,” their recently released fourth album, they
mostly seem to be channeling the goofy, artsy ghost of Frank Zappa,
if he were in Metallica.
The band members’ experiences as progeny of the Armenian diaspora
provided the fuel for “Mesmerize” and “Hypnotize,” its companion CD
to be released in late fall. Malakian’s family fled from Armenia to
Iraq before winding up in California. (Malakian was born in Hollywood,
Odadjian in Armenia, Tankian and Dolmayan in Lebanon.)
His personal and politicized fear, anger and sorrow drive “Mesmerize,”
from the opening “Soldier Side,” through the fierce anti-war
“B.Y.O.B.” to the melancholy “Sad Statue,” in which the Statue of
Liberty – the beacon of immigrants – weeps over her torn domicile.
“He sees it totally differently,” says Odadjian of Malakian’s view
of the war in Iraq. “It’s not because he’s from there, but because
it’s family. He doesn’t know when he’s going to get that call saying
something’s happened to somebody.”
Malakian’s need to express his feelings on global politics changed
the very dynamic of the band. For the first time, on “Mesmerize,” the
guitarist wrote the majority of lyrics and sings leads, while Tankian,
the traditional front man, plays such instruments as acoustic guitars,
piano and synthesizers (and co-writes and sings). It’s as if Keith
Richards and Mick Jagger traded roles in the Rolling Stones.
System built a reputation by gigging before releasing their self-titled
debut, on Rick Rubin’s American label. Rubin produced the band’s
four records to date, including ’01’s “Toxicity,” which became an
unlikely multiplatinum global hit with such singles as “Aerials” and
“Chop Suey!”
System’s intense, sometimes grandiose music has also earned the
group its share of detractors. For the haters, the best thing about
“Mesmerize” is the fact it’s mercifully short, just 36 minutes.
Odadjian says the group chose to release the two CDs separately,
rather than as a double album, because they thought songs would get
lost to modern listeners’ short attention spans.
“The youth of today has ADD, or at least they like to say they do.
The school we came from, albums were 11, 12, 13 songs, and every song
meant something.”
With his videos and the CD art, Odadjian says he tries to supplement
the songs, not duplicate or explicate them. Like the band’s odd name,
or such lyrics as “Gorgonzola gonorrhea,” some things are better
left unprobed.
“We don’t like to explain what we mean. It takes away the mystery.
It’s good to leave it to the person that’s seeing it or experiencing
it. I think our band is like an abstract painting.”