Music and Politics

I've note before that I'm a big fan of System of a Down, who to me are one of the more original bands to record in the last decade. At least since Bradley Newell overdosed and Sublime ceased to exist.

System has a new CD (part one of two) coming out and released the single BYOB (Bring You Own Bombs) and the video for that song directed by Mikey Moore (you can view it at the site). Just click the link and the song will automatically play. They were also on SNL on Saturday and Drudge is linking to the lyrics for BYOB, which include:

Why do they always send the poor?
My God is of Bible blood with pointed ears
Victorious, victorious steel
A BRAND NEW SPANKING DEAL
MARCHING FORWARD IS A GREETINGTHAT IS NOT IN COMPUTERS
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
La la la la la la la la la la ohh ohhhh
Everybody is going to the party Have a real good time Dancing in the desert
Blowing up the sunshine
Kneeling roses
Disappearing into Moses' dry mouth
Breaking into Fort Knox
Stealing our inventions
Every city, gripped in oil Crying freedom!
Handed to obsoletion
Still you feed us lies from the tablecloth

...Blast off, it's party time
And we all live in a fascist nation Blast off, it's party time
And where the fuck are you? Where the fuck are you?
Where the fuck are you?
Why don't presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?

Kind of disjointed as far as anti-war songs go. I expect liberals will need someone to explain it to them.

Anyway, Serj Tankian, the lead singer is anti-war and ultra-liberal. He's also an Armenian-American who has talked of the Armenian genocide committed by the Turks in 1915 in which they forced the Armenians to march through the desert until death. This genocide resulted in up to 1.5-million dead.

If I had the chance to meet Serj, I'd ask him if he would have been against a war to assist the Armenians when they were being slaughtered by the Ottomans. If the US was not in our isolationist phase and WWI wasn't raging, perhaps we may have. Would Serj have written songs condemning us then? Why would he choose to slam our current war effort? Do not the Kurds and other groups deserve freedom? He has a link to a website that relates the story of the events.

Back to the lyrics, the song rocks and has the stop and go feel that is SOAD's trademark, but for an anti-war song, they're kind of tame. Apparently one of the F**k words slipped through and people are going nuts. I agree with this guy at the SOAD message board:

SOAD came on right after skits about man-raping aliens and "Merv the Perv", which were both about a hundred times as offensive as anything SOAD did.We in America need to get our priorities straight.

Also check out this thread where an idiot professes to being a satanist and the other members smack her/he/it down.

Interestingly enough, among the links on the site, they have one for Stratfor.com.