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A week after System of a Down released their second studio album the Twin Towers fell.

Ten days later, their album went number 1.

Twenty years later, this sounds unthinkable. America’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Clear Channel Memorandum suggesting maybe don’t play SOAD’s latest single “Chop Suey!!” with its chorus about “self-righteous suicide”, and the feral American-exceptionalism that followed 9/11, should’ve spelled complete career death for this quartet of anti-imperialist Armenian dudes.

As a child whose musical input at the time was entirely Christmas carols and whichever Fleetwood Mac greatest hits CD was in my mom’s van, I can’t speak to the listening public’s embrace of SOAD. I’m almost certain my first exposure to them was Weird Al’s “Angry White Boy Polka.” All I know is a whole swath of people devoured the manic/melancholic energy of Toxicity, which remains fresh and fierce to this day.

System of a Down is one of the few acts of their era, alongside Linkin Park, that have gotten their deserved laurels and stood the test of time, even if their respective frontmen are now NFT guys (how do you own disorder? NFTs, I guess), and System’s drummer inexplicably turned out to be a Trump chud. The music video for “Chop Suey!!” has over a billion views, the album’s third single “Aerials” full of cryptic imagery about flying and falling went number one, and in 2006 they won a Grammy. Serj Tankian is regularly lauded for his vocal delivery, which remains inimitable—just watch Machine Gun Kelly’s tragic cover of “Aerials”, before which he admits that he can’t ever hope to match Tankian’s voice.

Like Mr. Gun Kelly, but for totally different reasons, System of a Down inspires only extreme reactions. People adore or despise them with equal vehemence. To me this feels right because they are a band entirely about contrast.

The word “unusual” deployed in every description of Tankian’s singing style doesn’t even begin to do it justice. He’s a Sacha Baron Cohen character by way of Billy Corgan through Cookie Monster. He sounds like your coworker who was recently served divorce papers, drunk at a company karaoke function on a Tuesday night, trying to sing all the vocal parts in Guns N’ Roses’ version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” And like, he’s probably overdoing it, but randomly he’ll hit a run of pitch-perfect notes, and his passion is so electric that everyone goes for it because reacting with stunned silence or ironic applause would be more embarrassing for the audience than the performer. You compliment him at the bar after he’s done, and he just grunts, doesn’t finish his drink, and walks home, totally indifferent.

While the album’s singles showcase plenty of Tankian’s style, none are quite as extreme as the opening track, “Prison Song.”

It starts with a single chug, followed by four full seconds of silence, which makes you wonder if the CD skipped or if you accidentally hit pause. The chugging returns full force, and then someone whispers something. Before you can figure it out, the train rolls by, and another whisper into the interim silence. Ok something about a prison? Rule of three dictates they’ll pull this move one more time, so you concentrate to decipher the whisper on the third rest, only to be met with skull-bashing guitars and a death growl. It’s such a simple trick, to pair silence with cacophony. A practical joke: the band wants you to lean in and let the noise whoopie-cushion you in the face.

The contrast doesn’t end there; the first verse Tankian sounds like he’s got a clothespin clamped on his nose. He speak-sings about the CIA funneling drugs into marginalized communities. Sloganeering isn’t exactly new to the scene, but we’re used to hearing Zack De La Rocha of Rage Against the Machine chanting things simple and strong. What is this Mickey Mouse shit? Defamiliarization. Presenting something known in a new way. How do you get someone to listen? Through passion? Anger? Eloquence? These tools are known quantities. Weirdness? Now that always catches someone’s ear.

Guitarist Daron Malkian chimes in with the whiniest Fred Durst impression to say,

I think he’s lampooning how the main man of Limp Bizkit’s voice cracks moaning “Everybody sucks!” in “Break Stuff”.  A cross-genre commentary on the “whinecore” so popular in the pre-9/11 era. This parody of a party-song gives way to some serious dissonance when Tankian rejoins:

He doesn’t even pretend to sing this; he just reads it off like a Wikipedia page. Simply: those with wealth and power are allowed to enjoy drugs and other illicit things for which the poor are imprisoned.

Where’s that tweet? Oh, here it is:

Like many jokes, it’s just the truth.

Exactly one minute into the song and we’ve heard a bizarre chorus of four different voices. Another five seconds and Serj is shouting what was once whispered: “They’re trying to build a prison.”

It’s a bold way to open the album. Complete sensory overload. Tossing all kinds of shit that shouldn’t really work together and seeing what happens. For myself, and apparently a lot of other listeners, this strange soundscape is all the more enticing for its unexpected turns. Can they really pull this off? They’ve already got you hooked, and you don’t even know it yet.

The song proceeds in this cycle, rising to an incredible bridge:

Now that’s the kind of sloganeering we know and love.

When I played this song for friend of mine whose favorite band is R.E.M. he groaned, “Oh wow! What a deep message!” Sure, I get why someone might be exhausted by a beloved metal band’s explicitly political lyrics, a group of now millionaires hallowed in halls of fame and retrospectives, but I do think criticism of this kind sounds something like, “Shut up and dribble.” Recall, this music was made when the band did not have a secure foothold in popular culture.

This has always been a battle: where the line lies between artistry and politics. To present statistics about American incarceration is not exactly poetry, and maybe singing about them renders them into something flatter, impersonal, ineffectual—pop music instead of disturbing realities. Artists have always struggled to make their work matter. Looking to popular musicians is not a surefire way to enact political change, even if their songs advocate for good things.

What’s the difference between art and information?

It's no surprise to me that System found success with the surreal lyrics and sentiments of “Chop Suey!”, “Toxicity,” and “Aerials.” Art that leaves room for interpretation can allow us a sense of shared ownership. If I add my own meaning to the song, I become a part of its creation. The same way love songs become about a specific person or time in our lives. This is not an uncommon or an unwarranted experience. It’s a beautiful thing. I do think my friend is a bit misguided in assuming that art this overt lacks depth. I just spent several paragraphs interpreting this song’s sonic deluge.

When teaching undergraduates poetry, something I have no training in, I told them I thought poetry could be anything. A sign on the dining hall door announcing a sudden closure due to salmonella. The label on the back of an ibuprofen bottle. Their parents’ attempts at abbreviations in text messages. The art came in the presentation, the reinterpretation of these words. I made them chant with me:

I say: “Poetry is.”

You say, “Anything.”

One student substituted “anything” with “chicken wing.”

“You said we could say anything.”

Good kid.

Lauren Groff says, “Art is a stronger means of conveyance than convincing.”

I’ll resist the temptation to say that certain ways of thinking about art and its political value are a prison. Nothing is exactly “like a prison” because incarceration’s reality is horrific and inimitable. The prison in this song is not a metaphor. The statistics quoted in the song are almost unchanged twenty years after their initial reporting.

A teacher once said to me that propaganda tells you how to feel, while art asks you how you feel. Propaganda only allows you to feel one reaction, art a multitude. This has been a useful definition even if it deals in Sith-like absolutes. That teacher defined sentimentality the same way. I think this definition misses some nuance however, which is the different perspective of every audience member. I don’t actually think System of a Down is telling me how to feel with “Prison Song,” I think they’re expressing exactly what they feel, and I can either come along for the ride, or laugh off Serj’s cartoon hysterics and go somewhere else. Bet I won’t.

Anyway, here’s Neil Cicierega’s mashup of “Chop Suey!!” and “Crocodile Rock.”

I’m sorry if this newsletter somehow puts both of us on the algorithms crypto lists and we’re flooded with stupid web3 scam shit. What other weird alt-metal bands do you think survived 9/11’s cultural reset?