Metal and Politics – System Of A Down: A rage that continues

The name itself was strange, strange, disturbing from the start: System Of A Down. The original suggestion to call the quartet Victims of a Down was quickly rejected when the two guitarists Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian formed a new band in Glendale, California in 1994. Because their cause has a system. This also convinced bassist Shavarsh Odadjian and drummer Ontronik Khachaturian.

They are all children of Armenian immigrants, and their music should be louder and louder than that of most other bands. Her parents were refugees and displaced persons from Syria, Iraq, remote areas of Türkiye and the former USSR. The beards and hairstyles are also memorable. Their music is even more confused, impossible to classify, just damn messy: against the grain with baritone singing and pathetic, hardcore-brutal rambling, then again folkloric to the point of being tearjerker, as if costumed for the next bars. Unpredictable and breathless. This created a lot of uncertainty among the record companies. How should you market this? Only the producer Rick Rubin said: “Music for or by crazy people, so totally my thing.” Hard as a board, breaks like thunderstorms and constant sudden changes like Black Sabbath.

Serj Tankian looked like Frank Zappa with a funny beard, but he didn’t sing like that. And not like Ozzy Osbourne of paranoia, war pigs, megalomania and addiction. A strange guy. When the band was founded he was almost 30, the others were in their early 20s. More of an agitator than a musician or singer or lyricist. Tankian only came into contact with metal by chance because a friend of his, a fan of Depeche Mode and Cure, took him to an Iron Maiden concert. He thought it was okay.

In terms of content, however, the four were on the same page. Their songs were about war and justice, bombs and loss, life and death. And specifically about the elimination of a people: the Armenian genocide. The songs were appeals for recognition, restoration and reparation. At the beginning of the first performance, drummer Khachaturian held up a sheet that said: “1915. 1.5 million. Always Remembered«. That was and is the glue that makes the band: the massacres of 1915/16 against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Hidden by the majority, denied by perpetrators and descendants, and not recognized by Turkey to this day.

Now singer Serj Tankian has published his autobiography: “Down with the System”. Because of him, the band rarely performs anymore. He doesn’t like touring, became the front man by accident and can’t do anything with the rock star stuff anyway. And not with business either: He refused to be greeted by Putin in front of a large audience in Russia.

The first third of “Down with the System” revolves around the genocide in Armenia. Many episodes are about Tankian’s grandparents, who survived him. It’s also about the disasters of the 1890s, about pogroms with lots of details about the expulsion and the ongoing anger about them, not just about Erdoğan’s policies today. An exciting book. As expected, atypical for a rock star autobiography. Tankian was born in Beirut in 1967. Because of the Lebanese civil war, his family fled to Los Angeles without their father in 1975.

Despite or because of the seriousness of their topics, System Of A Down are a band that lets it rip, that dances on managers’ faces and does a lot of outrageous things (crass films, blackmailing record companies, publishing CDs like bootlegs, without corporate copy protection). And then Serj Tankian whispers, sings, rages, wails and screams – to multi-strength riffs and a hammer-hard sound, sometimes pathetic as for Armenian folk music, sometimes anthemic, sometimes with a primal scream. He sings what Jesus once said: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” A striking passage from Luke 23:46, delivered furiously, as if chopped up by a stroboscope.

The lyrics of the song as a whole are full of repetitions for better understanding, arranged kaleidoscopically, so that towards the end it dawns on you what it’s about. Strangely enough, not every child knows: it’s about “Chop Suey!”, their big hit. In industry conference rooms, this isn’t called a bestseller, it’s called a monster. The album has sold around 12 million times and the song has been viewed 1.4 billion times on YouTube.

The album hit record stores after suicide bombers flew hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York a few days earlier. A big sigh of relief from the record company for having advised against the originally planned song title “Suicide”. The composition and lyrics remained as intended, only the word “Suicide” was chopped up in the middle, commonly known as “Chop Suey!”, English for chopped up.

One could spend an entire day sifting through YouTube posts about this song and analyzing how its textures, video, and lyrics have been dissected. Therapists, singing coaches and influencers filmed themselves standing up and screaming when they heard this song. The text is even more disturbing. Short version: When someone dies after being sick for a long time, everyone is relieved; But if a person suffers so mentally that they cannot bear it, then suicide is considered a selfish, “self-righteous” act. Some influencers cry as soon as this realization arrives. In the song it is arranged kaleidoscopically, nested and repeated.

Tankian’s 350-page autobiography is exactly on this wavelength. That he could write well and get to the point became clear on September 11, 2001, when he published his essay “Understanding Oil” on the band’s website. The idea was to provide an answer to Americans who, at least on CNN, were screaming in disbelief, “Why do they hate us so much?” That didn’t go down well. This text was then taken down from the website.

But Tankian thinks about a lot of things for a long time. He did it that way as a child, he says in “Down with the System.” For him, the USA is “less a factual place than an idea,” and the so-called American Dream seems to him like a roller coaster ride that can make you sick even when things are going downhill.

Apparently it is an advantage to grow up with several languages, because then you are more sensitive to the nuances, to what words barely convey. Tankian learned English late, as a third or fourth language. Politically he is critically left-wing, so it is not surprising when he mentions Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, but also Gustave Flaubert and the great Armenian-American writer William Saroyan, who is little known in this country – and of course the others in the band. There is hardly any talk of rock ‘n’ roll excesses.

Serj Tankian: Down with the System. A Memoir (of Sorts). Hachette Books, 352 S., br., 14,99 €.