Serj Tankian
Serj Tankian
Serj Tankianis a Lebanese-born Armenian-American singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, poet, and political activist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, keyboardist, and occasional live rhythm guitarist of the rock band System of a Down, formed in 1994 by four Armenian-American friends...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMetal Singer
Date of Birth21 August 1967
CityBeirut, Lebanon
CountryUnited States of America
This track's pretty mellow in comparison to let's say a 'B.Y.O.B.' or something like that, ... But I'm glad we're going out with this track. It's a beautiful song.
They're great songwriters in the tradition of the Beatles and Pink Floyd. Their songs are beautiful and filled with all sorts of wonderful textures. It's all very emotional and moving. It's the first outside project I've ever produced.
I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song.
The next song I wrote in Paris years ago in a dream. So I didn't really write it, the universe wrote it. And that's what I believe about music, I believe it belongs to the universe, it comes from there and it's this beautiful energy that we share that transcends normal flash existence and that we inspire each other through.
I think it's my interaction with journalists that has pegged me more as political than my actual records, although they have obviously political aspects to them as well.
I like having songs that go from the personal to the kind of inter-relational, universal, because everything comes back to micro/macro and everything's tied in.
I write music when I'm free and for no particular project in mind.
I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process.
This will be our first live video per se, ... We've had videos where we've had fans and we played live, but it's never been at a venue that we would actually play.
We fought your wars with all our heartsYou've sent us back in body partsYou took our wills with the truth you stoleWe offer prayers for your long lost soul
We fought your wars with all our hearts - You've sent us back in body parts - You took our wills with the truth you stole - We offer prayers for your long lost soul.
I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase 'Elect The Dead' than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments.
We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.
It's the idea of a multi-sensory experience stemming from music that opened my interest into painting, to be honest.