Serj Tankian Readies Solo Album For October Release

Band Photo: System Of A Down (?)

Billboard.com reports: System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian steps center stage this fall with a new solo album, "Elect the Dead," due Oct. 23 via Serjical Strike/Warner Bros. The 12-track set features contributions from SOAD drummer John Dolmayan and former Primus stickman Bryan "Brain" Mantia, along with guitarist/bassist Dan Monti, opera singer Ani Maldjian and some string players.

The album is ripe with outrage both political and personal, including references to "bodies burning" on the shred-fest "Empty Walls" and how "antidepressants make life more tolerable" on "The Unthinking Majority." Tankian later declares, "We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong" on the eerie "Honking Antelope."

Other tracks blend the stop-on-a-dime rhythmic changes of System Of A Down with acoustic guitar strumming and Eastern European-tinged melodies, often in the course of one song.

"Saving Us" begins softly before exploding into a heavy, impassioned chorus and later, a double-time beat and a detuned guitar riff, while "Lie Lie Lie" matches its lyrical themes of incest and murder with appropriately ominous music.

"There's romantic songs, love songs, pain songs... a gamut of what I was feeling in the last year-and-a-half," Tankian told Billboard.com in April. "The whole album is this deep, human pain that kind of is looking for redemption."

Here is the track list for "Elect the Dead":

"Empty Walls"
"The Unthinking Majority"
"Money"
"Feed Us"
"Saving Us"
"Sky Is Over"
"Baby"
"Honking Antelope"
"Lie Lie Lie"
"Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition"
"Beethoven's C*nt"
"Elect the Dead"

Source: Billboard.com