System of a Down’s Serj Tankian: If You Love Our Music and Trump, “You’re a Hypocrite”

By wazup on June 16, 2020 Comments Closed / 87 views

System of a Down’s Serj Tankian: If You Love Our Music and Trump, “You’re a Hypocrite”

The recent political back and forth between System of a Down bandmates Serj Tankian and John Dolmayan is as jarring as some of the band’s most popular songs. While neither band member is directly responding to the other, they’ve each been using social media to share views from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Tankian leans far left, while the right-wing Dolmayan seems like he’s auditioning for a show on Fox News. On Monday, Dolmayan called the Democratic Party the “true bigots” and wished Donald Trump good luck in the November election. Now, the focus shifts back to Tankian, who is digging up old System of a Down lyrics to help illustrate his disdain for Trump.

In a new Instagram post, Tankian shared the lyrics to the early System of a Down song “Temper”, which appeared on the band’s 1996 Demo Tape 2, released two years prior to their 1998 self-titled debut album. Interestingly enough, the song was recorded before Dolmayan joined the band.

The highly political “Temper” features lyrics like, “Freedom cried the marching man/ Flags ripped out of their black hands/ Beaten! Slain! Tortured! Killed!/ Their only mistake was being born here.”

Captioning the post, Tankian wrote, “A very early @systemofadown song that was on one of our demos — lyrics below: if you love this song or play along to it and love Trump, you’re a hypocrite — just a simple fact.”

Earlier this month, Tankian called for protesters to “force the Trump regime to resign.” Dolmayan, meanwhile, described Trump as the “greatest friend to minorities.”

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In recent years, the members of System of a Down have mentioned creative differences as a major reason the band hasn’t recorded a new album since 2005’s Hypnotize. Tankian and guitarist Daron Malakian went public with some of their grievances toward one another, with Malakian telling us in an interview last year, “I don’t see that happening anytime soon that we’re all going to get together and make a new System of a Down album.”

See Serj Tankian’s Instagram post with the full lyrics to “Temper” below, followed by audio of the track via YouTube.

View this post on Instagram

A very early @systemofadown song that was on one of our demos-lyrics below: if you love this song or play along to it and love Trump, you’re a hypocrite-just a simple fact 🙂 “Temper” We want peace with Patriot missiles, Blown to bits are civilian targets, Parade! Laugh! Rejoice! Sing! We’re the victors of…nothing, Spend more money on a war, Your people starving, turned to whores, Slaves of the chosen one paying millions for each bomb, Country without a race , Formed from people you disgrace , White right conservative might , Killers of Kennedy’s with no fright , The American way! Freedom cried the marching man, Flags ripped out of their black hands , Beaten! Slain! Tortured! Killed! Their only mistake was being born here , Invade countries just for oil , Send your troops all down to boil , Iraq! Grenada! Nam and Chile! Truman doctrine our own way , Country without a race , Formed from people you disgrace , White right conservative might , Killers of Kennedy’s with no fright , The American way! The Government (FBI-CIA) here can suck my balls , Policing the world in overalls , Armed rebellion minority , Disrespected race, color, mind , Crazed loonies all walk the streets , Missing children on milk cartons , Mother selling child for crack , Mr. President check your back , Country without a race , Formed from people you disgrace, White right conservative might , Killers of Kennedy’s with no fright , The American way! The American way! The American way!

A post shared by Serj Tankian (@serjtankian) on Jun 16, 2020 at 12:57am PDT

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