Recorded in his rural home studio, with Tankian handling most of the non-percussion instruments and engineer duties, "Elect the Dead" is more tender and songwriterly than "Mezmerize" and "Hypnotize," the two recent chart-topping System records. It's still a brutally engaging guitar-rock album, to be sure, but it seems to come from a longing for small, more personal changes than System's sonic assault suggests.

"Civilization is already over," Tankian said. "What I felt with this record is that micro leads to macro. The other day I was trying to make a left turn on the freeway and a lady slowed to let me in, and that's the same thing as kindness between nations."

Likewise, "Elect the Dead" is full of tiny deviances from System's sound that add up to a distinctly different record. "Feed Us" is rife with jazzy breakdowns and nervous catcalls, and "Lie Lie Lie" is a daffy cabaret number with campy girlish shrieks. "Unthinking Majority" and "Empty Walls" are more traditionally pummeling rockers. But it seems Tankian isn't burdened by the expectations placed on him as a vanguard representative of modern heavy music and as an activist for the Armenian diaspora.

Last year, Tankian lobbied Congress to pass an amendment recognizing the Armenian genocide in Turkey. While the album does have oblique references to "the East where you killed her," "Elect the Dead" isn't a policy paper, nor a way to distance himself from System. Because even with its steely lyricism and throttling textures, "Elect the Dead," as in his band's best moments, is also really, really funny.

"Even politics can't be completely serious," Tankian said. "We're silly creatures. If we could record the thoughts of animals, they'd think we're ridiculous."

By August Brown, Times Staff Writer
July 15, 2007

Photo by Greg Watermann

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