“It’s like something Frank Zappa would do”: Serj Tankian names the classic System Of A Down song he finds “funny”

Serj Tankian in 2022 — (Image credit: Travis Shinn)

System Of A Down singer Serj Tankian has named which of the nu metal band’s tracks he finds funny.

The 56-year-old reveals on the Broken Record podcast that the lyrics on Bounce, taken from 2001’s Toxicity, were written in response to the sometimes extreme and violent themes of metal.

“For me, metal, if it gets too hard, it gets so funny,” he says (per Ultimate Guitar).

“It’s kind of like horror movies, right? If it gets too crazy, [if] it’s so over the top, I start laughing. And the same is with metal.”

Tankian continues, explaining that that’s why Bounce was written to be about “silk pyjamas”.

“I remember one time, when we wrote the song Bounce, the lyrics were completely different.

“I wanted to write a very heavy metal song about pyjamas, silk pyjamas, which is totally Dadaesque, like something [Frank] Zappa would do.”

The singer adds: “I was like, ‘Could you imagine writing a really heavy song about pyjamas, like, the Dalai Lama’s pyjamas, and Elton John’s pyjamas?’

“You just keep on going, and it becomes this funny thing.

Tankian’s bandmates apparently weren’t wowed by the idea.

“They looked at me with scorn. They’re like, ‘No, bro, you’re not gonna make us look like that.’

“So, there was always this attitude of ‘Don’t fuck with the metal.’ But I fucked with it enough, you know?”

Tankian was recently involved in a back-and-forth with Imagine Dragons over the pop-rockers’ decision to perform in Azerbaijan last August.

Azerbaijan has been accused of preparing to commit genocide against ethnic Armenians in its Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Tankian, who’s of Armenian descent, wrote Imagine Dragons an open letter last year advising them to cancel the concert.

When the band went ahead with the show and vocalist Dan Reynolds defended the decision in an interview, Tankian posted on Instagram: “I have nothing against this guy nor his band. I just hate artists being taken advantage of to whitewash Genocidal dictatorships.”

Tankian released his memoir, Down With The System, via Hachette Books in May.

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Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.