RIOTS. TERR ORISM. DEATH THREATS.
“DO YOU HATE AMERICA?”
Serj Tankian knew he’d be in for a rough ride when he agreed to appear on Howard Stern’s radio show on the morning of September 20, 2001. Loudmouthed ‘shock jock’ Stern was one of America’s most infamous DJs. But at that precise moment, System Of A Down’s singer happened to be one of America’s most infamous rock stars.
Seven days earlier, the frontman had posted a controversial essay titled Understanding Oil on his band’s website. In it, he analysed what he saw as the real reasons behind the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just 48 hours before. The arguments he made were complex yet clear-headed, blaming decades of failed American foreign policy. But the fact remained that Serj Tankian – a man born in the Middle East – was saying the unsayable, and now his patriotism was being questioned on air by Howard Stern: “Do you hate America?”
“I wrote the essay because I was trying to understand it myself, and it really backfired,” says Serj today. “They had been talking shit about what I said on the Howard Stern Show, mischaracterising my words and intentions. He wanted me on to explain my words. I had to get on and defend myself.”
All of that would have been chaotic enough at the best of times, but System Of A Down had released their second album, Toxicity, a week prior to the 9/11 attacks. That record was a dazzling carnival of ideas that disentangled System from the all-pervading nu metal scene they’d been bundled in with a few years earlier. Now the band were on the verge of something bigger and much more important.
Serj Tankian survived his on-air entanglement with Howard Stern. For all the controversy, proved to be a game-changer for System Of A Down, transforming them from cult oddballs into a powerful unifying force. Twenty years later, it stands as one of modern metal’s most significant albums –
