Do we like Serj Tankian?
Our score: 8 out of 10. On the right side of every harm question we could check and a long record of activism, but we found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ issues and he can be blunt.
Serj Tankian was born in Beirut, and was seven when bombs went off outside the family home. The family ended up in California, where he found heavy metal at an Iron Maiden show and eventually fronted System of a Down. His grandparents survived the 1915 Armenian genocide, and that history runs through nearly everything he does.
By his own telling he was an activist before he was a rock star: “I was an activist before becoming an artist.” He says he’d “love to wake up and not be an activist” but that the unjust world makes that impossible. To fans who wish he’d just play the hits, he’s said “no one can tell me what to say and what not to say”.
The harm check comes up clean. In 2020 he posted that fans who sing along to his song “Temper” while backing Trump are hypocrites, and in 2024 he called Trump “an absolute maniac”. On the planet, he told the Big Issue in 2021 that “going back to normal is extinction”. We found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ or trans people either way, so that part is a gap, not a tick.
The messiest stoush is with Imagine Dragons, who played Baku, Azerbaijan, in September 2023 despite his public objections. Tankian said he “draw[s] the line at ethnic cleansing and genocide”, claiming the show helped whitewash a regime. Frontman Dan Reynolds replied that he doesn’t believe in “depriving our fans who want to see us play”. Tankian then said he doesn’t respect them as human beings, which is pretty harsh for a disagreement about a gig.
The recent story is Israel. After its cabinet recognised the Armenian genocide, Tankian said in a video that Netanyahu’s government was using “our history, our genocide, our pain” for political advantage, and tied it to Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Lebanon. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a survivor’s grandson refusing to be used as a prop, or as dismissing a long-sought recognition. In September he also guested on a Falling in Reverse single with Corey Taylor; that is one collaboration, not a pattern, and we haven’t dug further into that band.
On the good stuff, System of a Down reportedly raised over $600,000 for the Armenia Fund in 2020 through new songs, per a band statement. He also runs an Armenian coffee brand, Kavat, with a Los Angeles café. It isn’t a long charity list in what we read, but the activism itself has run for decades and costs him fans.