System of a Down

Released just one week before 9/11, System of a Down’s Toxicity was as good a soundtrack to the tumultuous times ahead as any (second only to Slayer’s eerie prophecy God Hates Us All, which hit shelves that Tuesday, September 11th). Rife with snarling, black metal ferocity; a freakish, carnival-like atmosphere; and memorable choruses, Toxicity was a rare mix of socially conscious and commercially viable heavy music.
    Over six million in album sales and almost four years later, the group announced it would release a single album in two parts. The first, Mesmerize, perhaps even more psychotically dynamic than its juggernaut predecessor, debuted in May this year and showcased a band eager to show they were not ready to rest on their profitable laurels. System of a Down was rewarded for their tenacity, especially financially, as Mesmerize tallied almost 475,000 sales in its first week, more than doubling Toxicity’s opening totals.
    Hypnotize, the second half of System’s highly anticipated — and long-time-in-the-making — follow up is set for a November release. In a series of two interviews, the band’s outspoken frontman Serj Tankian, and chief songwriter and lyricist, guitarist/vocalist Daron Malakian, expressed their relief that the long process of releasing their two-part album is finally drawing close, and addressed the added pressures of recording while placed under a much more public microscope. The conversations reflected two very different personalities: Serj, in a matter perhaps indicitive of his chaotic vocal style, proved to be difficult, forcing the conversation into an uneasy push and pull. By contrast, Daron was open, relaxed and eager to talk.

[One fateful Tuesday in September, Synthesis spoke with Serj Tankian]

It took two years to complete Mesmerize/Hypnotize, is that correct?
Serj Tankian: Between the time we got together and started collaborating on the songs, got in to record and got it mixed and mastered, yes, it took about two years.

Was this the longest time you had to make a record before?
Yes.

How did that affect how you and the band work?
I don’t recommend it. I don’t like that. It just kind of drags for me, personally. I like it when inspiration and the reflection of the inspiration are timely enough for there to be a good… It almost feels like, when something takes too long, it gets dragging. And part of that was we had way too much material. Of course you have to realize that we made two records. So that’s why it took so long, not because we wanted it to, and not because that was our choice. We ended up doing two records’ worth of material, and all of that takes longer as far as practicing and getting it tight, and the overdubs and mixing and mastering. It just took a long while. We were just like... [groans].

Even after that experience, are you looking forward to getting back into the studio?
I’m always in the studio. I have a studio next to my house. I’m always working. When I’m home, and when I’m on the road, I have a portable studio.

Working all the time, do you ever worry about burning yourself out or writer’s block?
I don’t worry about writer’s block, no. I think it comes to you when it comes to you. I think there are times that you need to absorb and times you need to output, and it should be an organic, natural process, not something that you try to do based on specific concerns of times, deadlines or anything like that. I don’t believe in crap like that.

What did you absorb during the making of Mesmerize/Hypnotize that you think came through the most?
Whatever I absorbed was probably before the making of it, you know what I’m saying? And I don’t know. I don’t follow the diagram of my inspiration to its output. Life is like an inspiration — you’re living it, and if you’re awake, you just soak it up and it comes out in some form or fashion. For you to have to retrospect where what came from, that’s a scientist’s job, not an artist’s job.

Does it come as a relief to get the second set now?
Definitely, man. We’re excited about releasing it. We’re like, “please, put it out there.” You want people to hear it, because once they hear about it, you won’t have to talk about it as much. They can talk about it — that’s fine. They can listen to it, too. That’s fine, too. Or not.

Do you read your own press?
You know, sometimes it comes. I used to not read it all, because I don’t believe in going back. To me it’s all retro. Sometimes it gets to me. Management sends it and I’ll look at it and read it. Or it gets e-mailed to me and I’ll look at it and see it. So it gets to me here and there.

Do you put any stock in it?
No. I don’t. You know, opinions are like assholes, right? The reason I don’t put stock in it is because from day one, if something’s your vision, then it’s your vision. You can’t really listen to somebody else about it. It makes no sense. If something’s not your vision, then it’s not art. I mean, I’ll take that back — if something’s not your vision, and you’re doing it for someone else, then you should be listening to them.
    A lot of good art and music is not even appreciated during the life of the artist, historically. It just is whatever. Some is, some isn’t. We’re thankful for where we are. We’re thankful we have fans. We’re thankful that we make a living doing what we do. The rest—the hoopla and the fame factor — it’s just a lot of work, unnecessary sometimes.

Does the popularity of the group wear you down?
No. The commerciality — politically or whatever — is not the aspect that’s trying. It’s the expectations of people around those things that are trying and unnerving.

Are you still glad that you decided to release the album in two parts?
Yes. If we put it out as a double record, it would have been too exhausting. It’s just way too much motion for the ears all at once. I’m not saying that in an unmodest way. We sat down and listened to 30-something songs while we were doing this whole process over at Rick’s [Rubin, producer] house, and I was just tired. I was like, I don’t think anyone should do this like this. It’s just not right.

[Later that day, Synthesis spoke with Daron Malakian]

I got to listen to Mesmerize and Hypnotize back to back today.
Daron Malakian: Oh, cool. I haven’t spoken to anyone who’s heard Hypnotize yet.

Would you say listening to them back to back is the best way to enjoy them?
It would be nice if people did, but not necessarily. They were made to be enjoyed separately, and I’m sure you’re going to get quite a few people who say which one they like the best. But for me, I can’t say I like one better than the other. I think there are really strong songs on both records, but yeah, if you’ve got the time, go ahead and put them both on [laughs]. It wouldn’t be that long, either. Together it’d be just over an hour.

It seems like together it’s the length of one disc.
And that’s the whole point, though. That does more justice to the song. Now when someone listens to Hypnotize, they have a pretty good idea of what they heard on Mesmerize. The songs don’t take away from each other. When you put so many songs on one record, the songs start to take away from each other. It just doesn’t do justice to the songs.
    I can remember back before there were CDs, and there were either cassettes or records. On a cassette, you’d have four or five songs on side one and four or five songs on side two. You’d be lucky if you got 11 songs on one album. But if you listen to the records we consider classics, a lot of them were made at that time, and I think a lot of that had to do with them being short records. It’s why we can identify with them a bit better. It’s not this bombardment of 40 songs hitting you at one time, for an hour-and-a-half, just because you can fit that much music on a CD.

I think the only long album I’ve been able to sit through the whole way through was Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness by Smashing Pumpkins.
You see, with an album like that, I end up just picking out tracks as opposed to listening to the album. On the album they put out before that [Siamese Dream], I actually listened to the whole thing. I could tell you I like tracks off of Melancholy…, but I can’t say I actually sat there and listened to the whole album.

Do you think that releasing one album in two separate parts plays into the way people listen to music now — with iPods and file sharing and things like that?
Yeah, but not the way they listen — the thing is, I was just talking to someone about this — and I think something that’s really cool, is that when we play live shows, we can play pretty much any one of our songs, and you have a whole crowd of people singing along. So that makes me think people are actually listening to our albums instead of just the singles we put out, and that’s not easy to do in this day and age when there are iPods and people downloading songs off their telephones and stuff. People are still listening to our albums, and once again, that goes back to keeping the records short. That plays into people’s attention spans.

It seemed as if the music catered to that as well. These albums had so many changes that it was like the musical equivalent of channel surfing.
Well, that’s my attention span [laughs].

With all the changes in the songs, do you worry about getting yourself off track? Do you find yourself having to rein yourself in?
No. I want it to go off track. It’s this cookie cutter mentality that’s hurting music and art in general. “Oh, that sold, so let’s make 10 more.” For me, it’s not about repeating, it’s just about creating new, and for creating new, you have to go off track once in a while.  

How did you go about divvying up the songs between the two discs?
I have CD turntables made by Pioneer, and I did a lot — let’s say I was mixing songs at a club or something like that, it would be the same thing. I was just trying to find the right flow. I went through a lot of different renditions before I came to one that I liked. This was the hardest record for me to sequence because of that.

Was it simply because you had so many tracks going in?
It was that. We wanted to break it up with two, and you had my manager, and Rick [Rubin] and people at the label who were like, “if we’re going to break it up into two, make sure all the best songs aren’t on one” and “make sure we have enough singles here,” and all these business people came into it. It was just like, after I finished, I realized that I stopped listening to everybody. That’s how I got the one that I liked.



Do you think the hounding was increased by the success of your previous album?
Yeah. When we put out Toxicity, no one was expecting us to succeed. Now that they have that, they were expecting…they weren’t involved in the writing, but they’re very involved in the business side of things, that’s for sure. The one thing I do like about our relationship with the label was that they didn’t even come into the studio when we were recording. They don’t tell us what to do music-wise, and sometimes, I like them being involved on the business end, because they get stuff done on the business end — the managers and the labels. You’ve got to have someone doing that. I’m not that guy.
    Y’know, it’s not a bad thing when the label wants to be involved. You have a lot of bands out there that the label doesn’t want to be involved, and the labels shelve them.
    The way we’ve established our relationship with them over the years — like I said, no one expected System of a Down — when they signed us, they didn’t expect us to probably still be a band on their label now. But, y’know, here we are. 

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