Rocky Mountain News, CO
Sept 30 2005
System of a Down plays heavy metal and politics
By David Milstead, Rocky Mountain News
September 30, 2005
There was a time – it wasn’t that long ago, was it? – when most
Americans equated heavy metal with Warrant’s Cherry Pie.
Knuckleheaded lyrics by knuckleheaded white guys.
Sure, there were exceptions. But those bands weren’t the era’s
platinum artists.
System of a Down is the band that shows how much metal, and America,
has changed since the 1980s. Four seemingly crazy, leftist Armenian-
Americans released an album called Toxicity just a week before the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The first track wasn’t about cars and girls – it was Prison Song, a
critique of the American criminal-justice system. “All research and
successful drug policy show / That treatment should be increased /
And law enforcement decreased / While abolishing mandatory minimum
sentences!” singer Serj Tankian screamed.
The album seemed poised to stiff, a victim of bad timing and a
political climate in which, in the words of Bush spokesman Ari
Fleischer, people “need to watch what they say.” Instead, it sold 5
million copies.
Was the band heartened that its album was accepted, even embraced, at
that time?
“Well, that’s more of a statement than a question, I think,” said
Tankian, speaking from the road on a tour that stops at the Pepsi
Center on Sunday. “We had some (radio) program directors dropping the
single (Chop Suey) because of our statements. It was just a strange
feeling.”
But the band was emboldened and followed with an outtakes disc called
Steal This Album.
Now, with May’s Mezmerize, to be followed by November’s Hypnotize,
the band is in the midst of releasing a potent two-disc set that
retains its leftist message. It also accomplishes the odd feat of
being more accessible yet even stranger, in some ways, than System of
a Down’s past work.
The first single, B.Y.O.B., asks the time-honored questions “Why
don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?”
The song alternates between juggernaut riffs and a loping, chunky
chorus with sweet-voiced backup singers extolling “coming to the
party” to have a “real good time.”
Other efforts, like Violent Pornography, with its sendup of media
culture, aren’t quotable.
While System of a Down’s lyrics are distinctive, it’s the music that
makes the band truly unusual. Tankian refuses to be pinned down when
asked what specific artists he and his band mates have listened to,
and he instead names virtually every genre in the record store:
metal, rock, punk, Armenian, Arabic, Caribbean. “A very, very large
mix of things.”
Radio/Video, on Mezmerize, illustrates that mix. “It’s kinda got a
polka beat in the middle. It’s an interesting song. I like the fact
there are tempo changes throughout the song, and in the bridge
section it goes faster and faster. It’s kind of operatic, too,”
Tankian said.
The band could probably have fit all of Mezmerize and Hypnotize onto
one CD. At just over 36 minutes, Mezmerize is tiny by modern CD
standards. But both albums in one package probably would have been an
awful lot to swallow, particularly for the first-time listener coming
late to the System of a Down party.
“It would be a bit much,” Tankian said. “It always worked out better
for us to have people digest the first part of the double album.”
Tankian says the band’s current live set list includes only one or
two songs from Hypnotize; the band will wait for the album’s release
before adding the bulk of the disc to the playlist.
The band, in Chicago this week for a concert, took time out to stop
at the Batavia, Ill., office of House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert to
ask him to hold a vote on Armenian Genocide legislation that the band
says “will officially recognize Turkey’s destruction of 1.5 million
Armenians between 1915 and 1923.”
When it comes to the band’s Sunday date in Denver, however, System of
a Down welcomes all fans, whether they embrace the political message
or not.
“Certain fans may not be antiwar activists,” Tankian said. “Music has
a stronger impact on our bodies, souls and spirits than on our minds.
When our minds get involved, the experience is even stronger.”