SERJ TANKIAN: ONE MAN ARMY
by Andre Mihsin
ChartAttack
tures/64300/serj-tankian-one-man-army
Dec 19 2008
Canada
System Of A Down’s frontman has gone solo and not even he knows when
his band’s getting back together
Serj Tankian, the dynamic frontman of System Of A Down, has just
released his Elect The Dead debut solo effort. During the second day
of a short but busy promotional tour, Tankian found time to relax
with Chart in the intimate confines of Toronto’s Opium Room to lay
back and shoot the shit.
Chart: When you were planning this solo record, did you ever try
singing in another language?
Serj Tankian: I sang a song with a band called Les Rita Mitsouko from
Paris. I sang the English version, but I also sang backgrounds on the
French version. There’s one song I play in Armenian on acoustic guitar,
but generally don’t sing it out. My mom just loves that. Otherwise,
I don’t think so.
I think it would be interesting if you wrote an Armenian song and
performed it in your own unique style.
I’ve heard that from other Armenians. It’s cool if I write Armenian
songs and the six million other Armenians might understand them, but if
I write it in another language I can communicate it to the whole world.
People listen to black metal sung in Norwegian even if they don’t
understand it.
Even when they sing it in English you’re not going to understand with
black metal. [laughs]
You’re right. You have a song on the record called "Praise The Lord
And Pass The Ammunition." It seems that religion and warfare always
get mixed up together.
I know exactly what you mean. Religion is never the reason for
war, but it’s what motivates the masses to do things that they
wouldn’t normally. Religion is used as a tool for war, even with
genocide. The Armenian genocide they always say was a religious
thing with the Christian minority, and the holocaust Jews were the
minority in Germany. When you really think about it, it wasn’t about
religion. Most genocides have very strong economic undercurrents
usually at a time where the government is suffering from another
giant setback, or currency is low and they’re able to take these
riches from these minorities. It’s kind of like gaining this huge
revenue stream. Of course, the people are not going to go to war for
that purpose, to give money to the government.
So they fight for God.
Yeah.
Your grandfather passed away a couple of months back. How did all
the things that he went through influence you?
Him and my grandmother were both genocide survivors and they always
told me the story of what happened in their lives and families
and why I was never able to complete my family tree because of
the genocide. They didn’t necessarily politically motivate me, but
personally motivated me to find out more, and it made me more active.
Years ago I had this organization called the Genocide Project, and
I interviewed survivors of genocides and holocaust. We came by and
set up audio cassettes in an interview format and it was a six- or
seven-hour session and I held my own video camera. I literally held it
in my hand for six hours and taped and kept and made DVD copies and
gave them to all my uncles. I haven’t even watched them since then,
to be honest. Maybe I should.
Other bands have taken breaks from each other to work on separate
projects with not nearly as many break-up rumours as the ones
surrounding System Of A Down. Why do you have to always remind people
you’re just on hiatus?
People make their own stories, I guess. We decided to take an
indefinite hiatus, which means we have not decided what we are going to
do with each other in the future. We’ve been a band for 11 years. We
put out five records. People think we should be a brand like Pepsi
and should be putting out stuff every year, but we’re not. We’re not
a corporation, we’re a group of artists and friends. When we want
to say something with each other and to the world, then we will. And
when we don’t have anything to say through each other to the world,
then we won’t. It’s as simple as that. We don’t want it to be a brand
that is completely used all the time to generate us money and other
people money. That would be abusive.
To me, we needed time to prioritize other things in our life. The band
was a priority for 11 years and everything else was secondary. We
needed time to prioritize our own projects, our own lives, and then
come together and see if there is room to do stuff in the future or
not. Nothing is decided. We’re all friends and the door’s always open
and the possibility is always there.
This feature article is from the November 2007 issue of Chart
Magazine. You can purchase the issue in the Chart Shop.