Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the ’70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced. – Serj Tankian
I don’t want to spend all my time working as an activist. I don’t get satisfaction out of it. I’d rather be doing something else. I’m a musician. – Serj Tankian
With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music – you can’t do that in jazz. You can’t do that with classical. – Serj Tankian
With most of the songs and music that I’ve composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral. – Serj Tankian
As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they’re activists or not, that’s the important thing. – Serj Tankian
I’ve got my own studio, and I’ve got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I’ve got stuff that’s electronic, orchestral, jazz, I’ve got rock, I’ve got metal, you know, I don’t have polka. – Serj Tankian
If you’re using live bass versus orchestral bass, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you’ve got to balance it out. – Serj Tankian
Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another. – Serj Tankian
I’ve always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that. – Serj Tankian
If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you’ll have zero capitalism, zero competition – it would just be one giant company. – Serj Tankian
I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician. – Serj Tankian
The most important thing about music that I’ve learned after all this time is that to me, it’s a way of reaching the truth. – Serj Tankian
Sometimes a good love song can change the world and create positive energy more than any political song can. – Serj Tankian
We first fought… in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change. – Serj Tankian
I’m not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days. – Serj Tankian
I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. – Serj Tankian
With ‘Elect the Dead,’ I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I’ve always wanted to make. – Serj Tankian
Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace. – Serj Tankian
I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase ‘Elect The Dead’ than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments. – Serj Tankian