Lochlan Watt
The return of the Armenian-American metal lords has been one of 2020’s few pleasant surprises.
It’s been 15 long years since the now legendary metal outfit went on hiatus. After 2005’s Hypnotize and Mezmerize (a pair of albums released six months apart) System Of A Down disappeared. Despite sporadic live shows since 2010, the creative differences cited as the cause for their hiatus seemed to be a full stop on their discography.
In 2020 they returned to us. But as vocalist Serj Tankian explains, the genesis of their unexpected new songs is hardly a reason for celebration.
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Released last month, ‘Protect The Land’ and scorching ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’ is the band’s first new music in 15 years, and came armed with an urgent message about the conflict happening in their cultural homeland, as vocalist Serj Tankian told triple j’s Lochlan Watt.
Last year, Tankian was living in New Zealand (“I’m a resident and have a place there”) before relocating to Los Angeles. “It was just too peaceful and too nice [in NZ],” he chuckles. “So, we decided to come to L.A., a place where it’s absolute madness: new lockdowns, restaurants closing, COVID cases…”
His reasons for returning were twofold: “One, because we miss family… and two because of the war with Artsakh and Azerbaijan,” he says.
Artsakh is also referred to as Nagorno-Karabach, and is a disputed territory that lies in Azerbaijan.
While it’s officially recognised as part of Azerbaijan, the vast majority of its population are ethnic Armenians, many of whom have lived there for generations.
Hold up… What’s happening in Armenia?
The long-running disputes between Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan is complicated, and it’s contested how the unrest between the two former Soviet republics even began.
In September last year, the decades-old conflict over the Republic of Artsakh (or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) erupted once again, resulting in weeks of heavy fighting that reportedly resulted in thousands of deaths.
Like many in the Armenian community, the scars of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923 run deep within System Of A Down, themselves all descendants of its survivors. Tankian himself is the son of refugees who found themselves displaced in Syria and Lebanon. His family brought themselves to the USA at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war when he was seven years old.
Reuniting for a cause bigger than the band
Serj’s frustration at the ongoing conflict unfolding in Nagorno-Karabakh became the call to action for System Of A Down. “At the time John, our drummer, hit us up and said ‘this is bullshit, we’ve gotta do something about this’… he was like ‘we haven’t put out a song in 15, 16 years, we need to do something, put everything aside, and do a song for our people’.
“We all agreed, and we made it happen in a miraculous amount of time. I think we knocked it out in three or four days. It wasn’t really about sitting down and going ‘Oh, do I like these songs to be this way or that way, should he contribute this or that?’ We all did our own thing and made the songs as great as we could.”
Serj says the creation of these songs reflects the early days of the band – before fame, money, egos, and diverging creativity complicated everything – the days when their political message was their most urgent fuel source.
“We were just four connecting. No management, no label, no producer, no nothing, we were just being like ‘We gotta do this whether our team likes it or not, whether the label wants it or not, if they don’t we’ll put it out ourselves.”
“We were so gung-ho because it was more about making an activist-type of impact.”
“We had to raise our voice, we had to be screamers, we had to be loud, and the best way we could have done that was release music, and put a message with that music… we’ve raised probably about a million dollars in the last two or three weeks for Armenia Fund, which is a global non-profit for humanitarian aid in Armenia and Artsakh.
“We didn’t get together and say ‘Hey, we gotta do music together’, it was more ‘we gotta do this for our people… let’s get together and do this.’ Nothing else mattered, and that’s what’s beautiful about it.”
Serj’s words have struck a chord with the Armenian community in Australia – a Parliamentary petition calling on the government to intervene received over 3000 signatures by the time it closed last month.
“Time will tell if this leads to something else or not,” he says. For now, Serj is satisfied with what impact the band’s creative re-emergence has had.
“I’ve heard from friends that not only did it play in Armenia and Artsakh but it was played on the frontlines and gave people protecting their families a little something, saying, ‘We’re with you, you’re not alone.”
EDITOR’S NOTE, January 14 2021: This story has been amended to include more context on the conflict in Artsakh / Nagorno-Karabach. The headline has been changed accordingly. This article has also been amended to remove some contested claims.
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