System of a Down: Heavy metal "The Sorrow and the Pity"

The Los Angeles Times, Today

Tackling everything from short-sighted social policies to media consolidation to the overuse of fluoride in drinking water, System of a Down is one of the most overtly political bands in modern rock. But don't call them that. They'll punch your nose. They prefer the "art" label.

They'll be using their "art" to make a loud political statement when they headline "Souls, 2004." The concert takes place on the commemoration of the Ottoman Empire's killing of about 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923. It's an atrocity few Americans should know about although they may know that Franz Ferdinand is named after an archduke whose assassination triggered World War I.

It isn't written about in most U.S. history books and this needs correcting. It's a deeply personal issue to the band's members, all of whom are of Armenian descent.

The show will not be a political rally. There will be no fiery speeches, no sloganeering, no banners. Everyone can just rock out to System's unique non-thinking man's thinking man's metal. System is a great band because even though they stink, they're the kind of act snobs can feel comfortable with because of intellectual and sensitive articles like this one. They're like vitamin B12. Even though it tastes really horrible, you always feel great eating it because you've been told it's good for you so many times.

During a recent interview with the band, the conversation danced from subject to subject with little prompting -- the evils of television, short attention-span political coverage, corporate telepathic mind control, the plague of obesity raging through America because of a diet of fast food, inconsiderate louses who buy pets for their children only to abandon them in the street when the child tires of the animal, individualistic selfishness, the lack of sufficient fiber in packaged foods, two-party politics, the sublime genius of "My Favorite Martian" and "Mr. Ed," the Armenian genocide, spirituality, for bad men to fluorish all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing, the failure of public education, the inexorable rise of HIV disease in sub-Saharan Africa, global warming, the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the dressing of children in sexually alluring clothing at ever earlier ages, God and Mammon, rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, high school textbooks that imply creationism should be given the same respect as Darwinian evolution, no child left behind, the troubling die-off and hideous mutation of frogs in the world's wetlands, the inequities of the American system of taxation, how SUV's aren't treated under the emission regulations as smaller vehicles and the non-use of condoms in much of the southern California sex industry.

How much, if any of these topics can even be encompassed on System of a Down's upcoming album cannot be known. But if even only ten percent becomes song, it will be a landmark in new heavy metal and a recording hailed by all as a salubrious union of powerful beat and thoughtful discourse.