Serj Tankian: Elect The Dead : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

First the good news: With his solo debut, System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian didn't try to make an electro-pop album or acoustic-folk opus. In fact, Elect the Dead is nearly as decadently weird and furiously propulsive as System's art-metal records were: Serrated guitars and madman rants bump up against pained, slo-mo choruses and speed-punk splatter, occasionally within the song. Sometimes, the strange little frills work -- the prolix, singsong hooks and eerie, is-that-an-electric-violin? riffs on "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," say. But Elect the Dead mostly sounds like a random smattering of ideas, many of them undercooked: "Saving Us," to name one dud, features a bleated, awfully annoying chorus that Tankian's bandmates might have talked him out of, were they involved. And though some may praise the leftist, possibly Iraq-inspired doomsaying of Tankian's lyrics, it's hard to imagine anyone getting much out of his self-serious tirades about post-industrial society and putting "civilization on trial."