Down with the System: A Memoir (Of Sorts)

by Serj Tankian

Hachette Books, 2024

ISBN: 978-0-306-83192-8   hardcover   $30.00

I remember clearly the first time I heard System Of A Down. In 2019, not too long after my hiatus from music ended (read that story here), I was driving along a country road on my way home from my office with the radio cranked up loud on SiriusXM’s Octane rock music channel. The DJ was talking about System. I wasn’t paying attention—I’d never heard of them.

“Disorder! Disorder! Disor-or-or-der!” the vocalist screams.

What the hell is this?

The song was “Toxicity”, and boy, did it grab me—fortunately, I was still able to find my way home despite being enthralled by the song. I also heard “Chop Suey” and, my favorite, “Aerials”, over the years, but the band’s been quiet since System’s last two albums, Mesmerize and Hypnotize, were released back in 2005. I confess System dropped off my radar until this spring, when my daughter sent me a link to an NPR.org story about Serj Tankian’s memoir. Book in hand, I dove into System’s discography on Spotify, listening to songs and albums as Tankian discussed them in his book.

Serj Tankian’s book, Down with the System: A Memoir (Of Sorts), is a great read. Do you have questions like: What do System’s crazy lyrics mean and where does their amazing  sound  come from?  What  makes  Serj Tankian tick? What does the name, System Of A Down, mean? Why isn’t the band touring and recording new music? And what does Armenia have to do with it all? Down with the System has some answers for you.

Tankian begins his story at its roots—his family’s life in Armenia, and their struggle and suffering at the time of the Genocide (dated at 1915-1917). They fled to Beirut,  Lebanon,  where  Tankian was born (1967), only to be uprooted once again by the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. “If you want to understand anything about me, my life, or even System Of A Down, you need to understand the Armenian Genocide,” writes Tankian. And to help with that, he gives a good dose of the essential history.

Immigration to America had an immense impact on Tankian. In so many immigrant families, children effectively live in two worlds—the school world of American culture and language, and the “old world” of their parents whose limited English and unfamiliarity with American ways can put them at risk of unfair and potentially costly situations. 

Tankian’s family was no different. They faced the legal ramifications of a business decision his father made, and, during his high school and college years, it fell to Tankian to help his parents deal with the lawyers and the courts.Then, after college, he took a job in his uncle’s jewelry business. 

During that time, messing around with a keyboard was initially a stress reliever, but it evolved into to a hard-core romance with music. Seizing opportunities to make music, Tankian fell into a band that led to one of those innocuous-seeming, but ultimately life-changing meetings (think John Lennon’s first meeting with Paul McCartney): Tankian met Daron Malakian, an Armenian-American kid who “ate, drank and slept music.” When that first band faded away, Tankian and Malakian, their chemistry undeniable, started another band, Soil, a seminal effort that paved the way for System.

Tankian took all that legal and business experience gleaned while helping his family and created a successful software business to support his music. It gave him a steady income and eventually provided space to allow System to grow  musically while developing a crucial fan base. Ultimately, when music demanded more of his time than the business allowed, he sacrificed the business to focus full-time on music.

“[T]he only thing in my life that felt like it was  mine  was music,” Tankian writes. Life in Beirut with “bombs raining down” and his family’s experiences taught him that “[S]afety and financial security is a mirage. It can be taken away just like that … Music or art … felt more meaningful … Art … just is. … The way it makes me feel—or the way it makes someone else feel—is the whole fucking point.”

System’s music is “loud, heavy, political, artsy, and weird,” and the band’s tour with Slayer ahead of their first album release was “like going to rock ‘n’ roll boot camp” and a“real trial by fire.” But the lesson Tankian took was not what you might expect. “If there was one valuable lesson … it was this: don’t be neutral—it’s boring. … To me, that’s really the mandate for any kind of art. Don’t make neutral art and don’t make neutral music—that’s for elevators and malls. At the very least, make people feel something.”

Social and political commentary is integral to System’s identity. All of the band’s members are Armenian-Americans, and Tankian was first, and remains, an activist. “I made a promise to my grandfather that I’d keep telling [the] story [of his grandfather’s experience during the Genocide]… I also connected his struggle to a wider fight against injustice and inequality not just for Armenians but for everyone and everything. … You could say that activism has always been in my blood …”

Whether art should marry activism is subtext throughout  Tankian’s  memoir. While reading it, I was reminded of Picasso’s magnificent, horrific  painting,  Guernica, painted as an argument against war. Art can force us to look at truths we may prefer to avoid; we cannot look away. Tankian and System Of A Down draw us in with often insane lyrics and music that runs the gamut from folk melody to discordant noise. But when the last note fades, we’re left feeling—and thinking. 

Tankian’s fascinating book reveals him as a complex, inner-directed artist with an entrepreneurial enthusiasm and curiosity that animates his life beyond System. Some will follow the threads of Tankian’s  understatedly competitive relationship with Daron Malakian through the book, looking for reasons for the band’s silence. But creative alliances have their ups and downs (again, think Lennon and McCartney). That Tankian writes of System in the present tense throughout the book bodes well for the band’s future, though it will probably continue to be complicated. 

I highly recommend Down with the System.