Topic: System of a Down related articles

System of a Down is a heavy-metal band that can do fury and aggression with the best of them. And yet here is Daron Malakian, the chief architect of the group's sound, shuffling into the 1st Mariner Arena dressing room, shoulders slumped, face drooping, eyes averted, as if he's the most timid person in the building, if not the entire Inner Harbor. He nods at a visitor, then meekly extends his arm and offers a totally un -rock-and-roll handshake, a sort of dead fish with fingers.


His assistant appears more self-assured than Malakian does. So do the System roadies, the band's personal chef, Malakian's leggy fashion-model girlfriend, the tour-bus driver -- even the woman selling hot dogs at a concession stand upstairs on the fan-filled concourse, where the hair is long, the testosterone is thick and the dress code calls for black T-shirts celebrating this god of thunder (Iron Maiden) or that one (Metallica).

System of a Down has no patience for groupthink. It manufactures dissent through hard rock that’s hard to pigeonhole — part thrash-metal, part Middle Eastern and sometimes just plain weird.

The unorthodox band is releasing two albums in six months, pretty much a no-no in the corporate music business. But that’s just what System of a Down does.

“Mezmerize” was released in May, and “Hypnotize” is set to reach record stores Nov. 22. System of a Down’s parent record company, Sony Music, wasn’t too jazzed with the idea.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into a cookie cutter is a tough sell for the record company,” says System of a Down singer Serj Tankian, calling from his cell phone before a show in Detroit. “But ultimately it worked".

If you keep your tongue firmly lodged in cheek most of the time, you're eventually going to slip up and bite it. That's o­ne of the primary dangers in this seemingly eternal age of irony: phrases, music, clothing, and other affects adopted in fits of ironic appreciation have the damnedest way of creeping out of their holes and into your
subconscious-and soon enough that joke you made a few years ago about having an ironic coke party turns into 15-minute bathroom queues at every bar in the city for the next five years.

It's a slippery slope-in spite of all the defenses that we so carefully compound around our lives, the viral strain of ironic appreciation seems to have an uncanny capacity to work its way through our otherwise closed doors of perception. And that's the o­nly viable explanation for just how it came to be that a major-label metal band immerged from the darkest corners of late-'90s radio rock to become every indierock fan's favorite guilty pleasure: System of a Down are the new cocaine.

Interviews tend to unfold the same way for System of a Down, which explains why the group doesn’t do many of them. Although the Los Angeles–based quartet is arguably the most creative band working in the cookie-cutter business of rock, no o­ne ever asks about the music. Instead, singer Serj Tankian, guitarist Daron Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian, and drummer John Dolmayan find themselves peppered with questions more suited to CNN pundits.

The argument can be made that System of a Down has no o­ne but itself to blame. Since blasting out of the L.A. underground in the mid-’90s, the group has been vocal o­n hot-button issues that get Democrats and Republicans slugging it out o­n Crossfire. Furthermore, the band’s members are intelligent and informed enough to defend their positions o­n those issues. For example, when the Straight asks Odadjian about America’s war o­n drugs, which System of a Down took dead aim at in “Prison Song”, off its 2001 breakthrough Toxicity, he begins citing cases where the DEA has gone after everything from mail-order-bong businesses to U.S. suppliers of medical marijuana.