Philadelphia Inquirer, PA
Aug 26 2005
Rockers on a roll.
Accessing System’s spiritual side
By Dan Deluca
Inquirer Music Critic
Daron Malakian, the guitarist and principal songwriter for the
dazzlingly versatile Armenian American heavy rock band System of a
Down, is not a religious man.
But when Malakian, who will play at the Spectrum tonight along with
his System band mates, Serj Tankian, Shavo Odadjian and John
Dolmayan, talks about the creative outpouring that led to SOAD’s two
2005 albums, Mezmerize (out now) and Hypnotize (due in November), he
speaks in spiritual terms.
“The best way I can explain it is that I’m like a religious person
who prays a lot,” says Malakian, 30, who was born to parents who
emigrated from Iraq to System’s home base of Los Angeles. (The other
band members were born in Armenia and Lebanon, but they all attended
the same Armenian private school in L.A.)
“You pray a lot to get closer to God. For me, my religion is what I
do with music. I’m very into it. I’m very serious about it,” he says.
“And I’m always ready for my higher power to channel the music
through me. That’s what I wait for.”
Tankian has described System’s sound, which combines a metal edge
with Zappa-esque adventurousness, as “progressive rock in a
three-minute-song format.” The wide range of Malakian’s musical
interests is apparent as he randomly scrolls through his iPod. “Let’s
see, what have I got on here,” he says, talking on the phone from a
tour stop in Miami. “I just listened to Elvis in Hawaii. James Brown.
I’ve got some Scandinavian death metal. Wham! Agnostic Front. Alien
Sex Fiend. Al DiMeola. And I got the 2 Live Crew…”
Malakian’s catholic taste is apparent on the masterful Mezmerize, on
songs such as the radio hit “B.Y.O.B.,” which moves in the blink of
an eye from an all-out guitar thrash attack to operatic vocal
flourishes to a mock war recruitment ad song chorus (“Everybody’s
going to the party, have a real good time/Dancing in the desert,
blowing up the sunshine”).
“That’s pretty much my ball game,” says Malakian, who has always
written most of the band’s music but sings more than ever
onMezmerize. “What I bring to the band is my structuring and
songwriting style. Make it progressive, make it interesting, yet keep
it simple.”
With such an ambitious musical agenda and lyrics that often take a
confrontational political stance – and frequently mention the deaths
of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turkish government
between 1915 and 1923, which Malakian calls a “genocide” – it’s one
of the wonders of modern popular music that System of a Down is a
multi-million-selling band.
Like the prog-rock upstarts of Mars Volta (who will open tonight),
Malakian says “we see ourselves as an experimental band.”
“I don’t put walls in front of what I can write songs about or what I
can’t write songs about. There’s a hell of a lot of people who are
afraid to say the things that we’re saying right now, and I think
people appreciate that kind of honesty.”
Malakian, who has many relatives in Iraq, says he writes songs from a
social, rather than a political, perspective.
“When we sing a line like ‘Why don’t presidents fight the war?/ Why
do they always send the poor?,’ you can bring it down to a class
issue, if you like. Or it could be really personal for you, if you
just came from Iraq and have lost two legs and are sitting in a
hospital listening to that song.
“There are plenty of kids out there like that. And I’d like there to
be someone to speak for them.”