The Rise & Fall of SYSTEM OF A DOWN

System of the Down man they are so [ __ ] bad you guys need to start [ __ ] watching them cuz they are the best [ __ ] bands in the [ __ ] world right [Music] now what's up everybody I'm Finn mckeny this is the punk rock NBA and today we're here to talk about System of a Down they've sold over 10 million albums they've won a Grammy they were the first metal band to hit 1 billion on YouTube and Spotify with chop sooi and with so much Main success they've introduced millions of fans to the genre but without ever compromising on their Vision their music is just wildly eclectic combining everything from the Beatles to Black Metal to Armenian folk music some of the most Innovative interesting stuff to ever hit the mainstream and maybe even more importantly they've also always had a powerful message in particular raising a lot of awareness for The Armenian Genocide and other social issues to the point where they were banned on the radio after the 9/11 attacks and somehow despite not having released an album in almost 20 years they remain one of the most popular and influential metal bands of their generation and so the question is how do they do it and what is their lasting Legacy and impact those are the questions that I will try to answer in this video and also I'd like to thank factor for sponsoring this video if you're busy with holiday plans but you still want to eat well and you should then check out Factor they make nutritious Chef prepared meals that are delivered straight to your door and they're ready to eat in Just 2 minutes that means you can skip the trip to the grocery store and all the chopping and the prep and the cleanup and all that while still getting the flavor and nutrition that you need and if you eat out a lot it's a great way to save money it's cheaper than takeout or even worse delivery which if you ask me is a complete ripoff and also they have a ton of options personally I like calorie smart which is under 550 calories per serving but they also have new lunch to go meals that are ready to eat with no microwave required and their fancy new surf and turf options personally I love that I don't have to think about what to eat for lunch I just pick something and I know that it's going to taste good and that I'm also going to hit my macro goals so if you want to check out factor and honestly I think you should head to factor75.com or click the link below and use the code Punk 50 to get 50% off your first Factor [Music] box System of a Down formed in 1994 originally called victims of a Down based on a poem by guitarist Darren Malakian until basist shavo adjian suggested they Chang their name to System of a Down for one because he thought that name would appeal to a wider audience but also because that meant that alphabetically they would be filed closer to one of their favorite bands Slayer and they quickly got to work playing their first show in early 1995 and recording their first demo shortly after that which is notable for being much heavier than their later material they followed that up with their second 1995 demo which is really where they started to come into their own it's pretty impressive that they found their grooves so early of the four songs on the demo three of them ended up being on their first album although they do sound pretty different on this demo mying day and they kept their foot on the gas pedal releasing a total of five demo tapes and quickly building a local following as Darren said the two or 3 years that we were selling out clubs and had a huge buzz in La nobody wanted to sign us because we were Armenian we were told there's a big Armenian community in LA but who's going to get you in Germany who's going to get you in these places where they don't know what an Armenian is and one of the people who noticed the success they were getting was the legendary producer Rick ruin known for working with artists like Beasty Boys Run DMC Slayer and Red Hot Chili Peppers among many others but as much as he loved the band even he had his doubts they were my favorite band but I didn't think anybody was going to like them apart from a small like-minded group of people like me who were crazy no one was waiting for an Armenian heavy metal band and what's interesting to me is that even then they were branded as this like Armenian band when they've never really seen themselves that way at all as their vocalist Serge said in an early interview we're proud of our heritage and it's definitely an influence that we don't want to deny as far as our music and standing and some of our thinking it's just not specifically something that we're trying to involve in our music and say hey look we're Armenian but despite his concerns Rick Ruben signed them to his label American and they went into the studio after at the last minute replacing their original drummer with John Doan and they released their first fulllength album system of down in 1998 with sugar as the lead single and this song is to put it bluntly weird like the first line of the song is the kombucha mushroom people sitting around all day long what is that the song also just like completely changes feel every few seconds the video is super political nothing about this is accessible at all and yet somehow it became kind of a breakthrough hit for them getting regular airplay on rock radio and even on MTV the second single SP ERS was more subdued and showed that they weren't just this like crazy zany metal band and that song was also picked up by rock radio as well as appearing on the soundtrack for Scream 3 and somehow to the surprise of pretty much everybody involved by 2000 the album had gone gold as John Doan said we never expected sugar or spiders to be embraced by MTV or to be on the radio we never expected anything to be on the radio we thought we would be a very Underground band but for some reason the mainstream has kind of accepted it even the notorious iously uptight Pitchfork gave it an 8 out of 10 and kind of predicted the future as they said quote imagine the scene it's 202 System of a Down and Slayer are again playing on the same bill but this time the audience is chanting for the former sure it's unlikely but for how many bands would it even be conceivable which brings us to their second album Toxicity and the question here was could they follow up this groundbreaking album or would they fall into the so-called sophomore slump which is what happens when so many bands this great debut but then kind of run out of ideas and deliver a mediocre second album and from the beginning they were determined not to do that even if that meant turning down some truly amazing opportunities as John Doan said it was a difficult decision but we knew the followup had to be something really strong and to do that we had to turn down Iron Maiden Metallica bands we've idolized and been listening to all of our adult lives but as tough as that decision must have been in the moment it turned out to be the right call after spending months in the studio again with Rick Rubin as producer they emerged with a complete album and their choice for the lead single was a song called suicide which after being pressured by the label they eventually retitled to chop suoi and when the song came out in August of 2001 to say that it changed everything for the band would be a massive understatement wake up up put a little makeup despite sounding like absolutely nothing else on the radio to me it's almost like a more accessible version of Dillinger Escape Plan or as Kang called it a heavier version of Bohemian rap city because it changes feel so abruptly and frequently the song somehow became a radio hit and got into regular rotation on MTV and when the album came out it debuted at number one on Billboard over people like Alicia Keys insync and Mary J blig but unfortunately the timing for their success couldn't have been worse it was the week of September 11th 2001 as basist shavo odian remembers I answered the phone and it was my mom's saying put on the TV I turn on the TV and all of a sudden the second tower Falls at the same time my phone beeps again and I pick up it's my manager and he says congratulations you're number one on Billboard the timing wasn't great and the content of the album didn't help either with song titles like Jet Pilot and their most popular Breakthrough song with a hook that contains the phrase self-righteous suicide a lyric which actually got them banned from Clear Channel radio stations along with other metal artists like Meade death Metallica and a and pretty much anybody else that had any sort of song titles or lyrics that they thought might be poorly received in the wake of 9/11 a few days after 9/11 Serge also posted an essay on their website calling out what he believed to be American mistakes in Middle Eastern foreign policy which was deeply unpopular and got a lot of blowback I guess Serge put a statement on his website and now he's taken tons of crap for it we gave him crap for it yesterday uh he uh bravely said he'd come on the air and and try to explain cuz he feels he's getting a bum wrap and on top of all of that the band was also getting harassed and racially profiled as shavo said in the Midwest and in the South there were some remarks made they thought Armenians were Middle Eastern because nobody knew what an Armenian was we were pigeon hold as camel jockeys terrorists all these crazy slurs and for anyone who doesn't know Armenians are not Arabs and the official state religion of Armenia as Christianity so they would have absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attackers but obviously back then a lot of people didn't see it that way but still none of that could stop their momentum chopi may have been banned from the radio but it still got heavy MTV AirPlay and the follow-up singles toxicity and Aerials were both Billboard top 100 songs and with songs criticizing everything from the militarization of the police to Humanity's mistreatment of the planet although System of a Down kind of got lumped in with the new metal thing with Serge's kind of weird vocals and highly political lyrics to me they were almost more like an updated version of the dead kennedies but in spite of all that success or actually maybe because of it cracks were already starting to form in the band as Darren Malakian said chopi was a really great thing for System of a Down it made us more famous made us more money and it elevated us as a headlining Arena band but at the same time that's around the time where we all started getting separate buses and living our own separate lives as well and being as busy as they were riding the wave of toxicity success the band was in no place to record new material but fortunately they had 16 songs left over from the toxicity sessions that didn't make it onto the album because as Serge put it quote they didn't fit into the overall continuity of the album and even with all this mainstream success they didn't back off on their politics with the lead single boom being accompanied by a Michael Moore directed video which protested the war in Iraq every time you Dr the bom you kill child with that being said the album was essentially a collection of bsides and outakes that was just sort of intended to hold people over until the next album and most fans these days rank Steal This Album as their least favorite and they followed that up with what would prove to be their last albums The Double release of Mesmerize and hypnotize in 2004 and 2005 respectively these were originally written as one album but just like with toxicity and steel this album they ended up coming out as two separate releases and basically just picked up where the first album left off the debut single was Bob or bring your own bombs which criticized the American Military for in their view recruiting the poor to fight its Wars everybody's going good and what I find interesting is that even as they were doing their most accessible mainstream friendly kind of music like the chorus of BYOB at the same time there were also more extreme metal elements than ever for example here that song Hit the Billboard Top 40 and one a Grammy which I'm pretty sure is the only time a song with a blast beat in it has done either of those things or the black metal part in this song which may seem surprising but I think it's also worth noting that Darren signed satian to his label around the same time they followed that up with hypnotized which also went to number one on Billboard making it their third number one album it seemed like the band was doing better than ever and just couldn't be stopped everything they touched just turned gold but what nobody knew at the time is that this would almost certainly be the last album that they would ever release in 2006 the band suddenly announced that they would be going on Hiatus which usually means like we're breaking up we just don't want to say it although the band clarified that in this case that wasn't true as Darren said at the time we're not breaking up we're going to take a very long break after ozfest and do our own things which they did Darren and John did a project called Scars on Broadway Serge put out several solo albums and shavo collaborated with the Rizza among many other projects that they were involved with and they eventually did come back in 2011 for a round of international touring and Festival dates and played their first ever show in Armenia in 2015 but what never came back was more music or more regular touring in the question on everybody's mind was why why couldn't this great band who was at one time incredibly prolific putting out five Demos in 2 years why couldn't they manage to put out another album or even consistently tour some fans speculated that it was because of the growing political differences within the band specifically between Serge and Jon for example back in 2020 when Jon spoke out in favor of Donald Trump calling him quote the most attacked president in history yet the greatest friend to minorities but as much as people may have thought that would be a problem for the band that doesn't actually seem to be the case no that's got nothing to do with it down and have a discussion about politics and and be okay with walking away and having a difference of opinion you know if we H if we happen to have one other people speculated that the real issue was simply that Serge wasn't into making more music or touring again which actually does seem to be the case based on a Facebook post he made where he laid it all out as he said it is true that I and only I was responsible for the hias that System of a Down took in 2006 everyone else wanted to continue at the same Pace to tour and make records I didn't and his reasons for that involved several factors number one is that he felt that the band's music was getting redundant and he just didn't want to make what he felt Was the Same album over and over and over number two was money specifically that because Darren was the primary songwriter that meant he was getting more money than anyone else in the band and number three injuries to his back that made it physically difficult for him to do consistent touring and with Serge as the frontman of the band he wasn't really replaceable so without him things just really couldn't move forward but with all of that being said they were able to put their differences aside in 2020 to benefit the Armenia fund which helped people displaced by the conflict between artach and azaran I just wanted to write a song that was Armenian related Armenian history related but showed us as um Victors and not victims and what was really interesting to me is that from a musical perspective it felt like they really hadn't lost a step at all in fact this might actually be their most extreme material ever even 25 years into their career with some parts that are basically straight up black metal and as for the future at this point it seems pretty unlikely that system of down will ever make another album but who knows and even with a relatively small amount of recorded output their influence has been been huge first of all they introduced a whole generation of kids to like weird progressive metal and got them into the pipeline that eventually leads to bands like periphery muga and Gojira and maybe most importantly of all they made millions of people aware of the Armenian Genocide where over 1 million Armenians were killed by what would later become the country of Turkey and of course their fans continue to hold out hope for more music but even if it never comes System of a Down will always hold a special place in metal history all right my friends that does it for this video as always let me know what you think in the comments and I would like to thank everyone who supports me on patreon especially those of you who support at the true cult level or above patrons get all my videos and podcasts early I do giveaways there are members only channels in my Discord that I'm super active in and there's even a way to have me review your music so if any of that sounds cool hit the link in the description of this video and with that I'm going to sign out for now but I will see you next time

Channel: The Punk Rock MBA

Views: 317,054

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Id: i8Afui6ubCU

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2023