They Sing of the Body Eclectic

Los Angeles is home to the world’s largest concentration of Armenians outside Armenia, so maybe it’s inevitable that the city would produce a rock band from that community.

The members of System of a Down didn’t form their group on that premise, and their sound is much more metal than ethnic, but their heritage is nonetheless a key ingredient in the foursome’s makeup.

Serj Tankian, 32, System’s lead singer, cites his early awareness of Turkey’s massacre of more than a million Armenians in the early 1900s. “Seeing one injustice has opened my eyes to other injustices,” says Tankian, whose lyric for System’s song “P.L.U.C.K.” (which stands for “Politically Lying, Unholy, Cowardly Killers”) addresses the genocide.

“When you see that the truth is not coming through the mass media, then you start questioning everything,” says the singer, who enjoys seeing the interest Armenian kids have shown in his group, as well as the start-ups of some new Armenian bands.

But System of a Down’s appeal extends beyond the Armenian community, and in recent months its profile has been ratcheted up to the national level, thanks to a combination of its frenetic live gigs, modern-rock radio airplay for the single “Sugar,” and young rock fans’ growing interest in “heavy music.”

System also banked some credibility by signing with American Recordings, the Columbia Records-affiliated label owned by rock guru Rick Rubin, who has had a hand in the careers of artists ranging from Public Enemy to the Beastie Boys to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Johnny Cash. Rubin is the co-producer, with the band, of the group’s self-titled debut album, which came out in 1998.

Rubin was drawn to the band after seeing it perform live, and a recent show at the Whisky demonstrated the attraction.

Tankian, his face painted and his dark, curly hair flying wildly as he bellowed and howled, leaped and lunged to punctuate the group’s political anthems, social protests and personal ruminations on themes ranging from love to death to dope-smoking.

Tankian looked almost tame next to guitarist Daron Malakian, 23, a top-knotted, makeup-splattered glam banshee, and Shavo Odadjian, 25, a bare-chested bassist with red streaks adorning his torso. Drummer John Dolmayan, 26, is the plain one, merely shirtless and short-haired.

The players’ dramatic appearance reflects the one word that can aptly describe their dense blend of old-school metal, hard-core thrash, rap, punk and goth flavored with ethnic-folk cadences and Tankian’s aggressive, poetic vocalizing.

“We’re very theatrical,” Tankian explains. “‘It’s a mutual energy kind of thing. When people feel the music, it’s a spiritually powerful entity. It’s one thing to listen to an album, and it’s another thing to feel that live vibration coming through.”

The band has been on the road more or less constantly for a year and a half, honing its performance while touring with the Ozzfest and as opening act for Limp Bizkit, among others.

The players got a particularly intense crash course in winning over audiences while touring with Slayer. “Opening for Slayer was definitely the toughest thing ever, especially in Eastern Europe with all the old-school metal fans,” Tankian says. “Once you survive that, you can do anything. We could open up for Britney Spears right now. It wouldn’t matter.”

The band’s aggressiveness and weighty subject matter bring to mind Rage Against the Machine, another L.A. band that has gained a rabid following with its uncompromising stance.

But Tankian, although a fan of Rage, doesn’t think the two acts have much in common. “They play a very against-the-system type of music,” he says, “and we’ve got love songs and things that aren’t necessarily political.”

That’s true, but it’s easy to fixate on the band’s social-political content, which fits the music’s mercurial relentlessness and angry sound.

In any event, Tankian, an admirer of linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky, is not so much proselytizing as he is simply writing about “what interests me, personally. I don’t really plan things, lyrically. Certain songs require certain emotions, and then those emotions work themselves out into words.”

Also, he notes, “Our music is not just for social causes. It has an entertaining factor to it, because kids will not just listen to a sermon. That’s boring.”

The moshing, stage-diving kids at the Whisky were certainly being entertained. Yet while flying through the air, they also sang every word of every song, belying the notion that they’re mindlessly thrashing along and don’t understand, or care, what the band is saying.

“Kids are not given enough credit for what they know, for what they feel,” Tankian says. “I’m always asked, ‘Do you think this is going over the heads of most of your audience?’ Maybe it is, but if I can get five people thinking out of an audience of 10,000, that’s a success.”

And what does he want them to be thinking?

“If I can have one message understood,” he says, “it would be to have people look within for the truth in their lives, and to have their eyes open.”

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System of a Down headlines the Sno-Core 2000 tour with Incubus, Mr. Bungle and Puya, next Sunday at the Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim, 8 p.m. $21. (714) 712-2700. Jan. 19 at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura, 8 p.m. $20. (805) 639-3965, and Jan. 20 at the Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., 7 p.m. $20. (323) 962-7600.