Television Documentaries: Polemic with a touch of rock'n'roll
I have been wanting to talk about System of a down for quite some time.
Composed of guitarist/singer Daron Malakian, singer Serj Tankian, bass player Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan, Malakian and Tankian were born in Bourj Hammoud before moving to LA. That's a band, with a cause.
SOAD's first album, Toxicity (2001), was spin's magazine album of the year in 2001. Hailed as the creators of nu-metal, their music goes beyond being just metal. It has an oriental touch and a political edge, to say the least. Tankian is usually all over the place. not with his hair, but with his voice, low then high pitched, fast and then slow. you can never predict what's gonna happen next.
Tankian, along with Tom Morello (Rage against the machine's former guitar player, and currently with Audioslave), started Axis of Justice. "Our purpose is to bring together musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice.We aim to build a bridge between fans of music around the world and local political organizations to effectively organize around issues of peace, human rights, and economic justice".
System of a down new documentary, Screamers, discusses the armenian genocide.
A couple of interesting articles
One from the independent, and another one from Armenian public radio