Serj tankian elect the dead full album download

On "Elect the Dead," the first solo album by System of a Down singer Serj Tankian, it sounds like he's got a lot of things to say about the problems our society is now facing. Too bad he doesn't seem to know the most interesting or direct way to say them. The result is a so-so album that most System fans will find fairly pleasing but few will find all too necessary.

That's probably because there's nothing on "Elect the Dead" that you wouldn't already expect to hear from the System frontman. Tankian, who played almost every instrument on "Elect the Dead" and served as its producer, said that the album would be "very wide-sounding," which I guess translates to the fact that there's a few keyboard fills here and there. Still, as cool as the keyboard solos are in "Sky Is Over" and "Lie Lie Lie," there's little musically surprising here. The best songs on "Elect the Dead" sound like good System of a Down cuts ("Empty Walls," "The Unthinking Majority," "Saving Us"), whereas the worst moments just sound like the sloppiest System tracks ever. Nothing is all that expansive or new for Tankian.

"Elect the Dead" explodes with the opener "Empty Walls," a breakneck single with vicious guitars that concludes with a very System of a Down-esque vocal overlap jumble. It's a great start, complimented even more with the subsequent fired-up tirade "The Unthinking Majority." But from there, the album is mostly inconsistent, featuring many great hooks and choruses but few that amount to fully memorable tracks. Tankian's rants about antidepressants controlling our system, the tyranny of money, putting civilization on trial, and a "honking antelope" (some kind of metaphor with an explanation that went totally over my head) aren't going to provoke much thought.

The most interesting track here is certainly "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." The lyrics are cryptic but still get their message across ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition/People still ask when will Armageddon begin"), and with a super-eerie synth violin hook, cutthroat guitar riffs, ever shifting time signatures and lots of discrete noise in the background, it's the album's most musically vast effort. Named after a patriotic song originally written in response to Pearl Harbor, it's the one song that seems to best encompass everything Tankian wanted to accomplish with "Elect the Dead." The rest of his good ideas, both lyrically and musically, are just scattered throughout.

Tankian has already hinted at a second solo album that will have a more orchestral sound, but keep in mind that despite all of this, System of a Down is still around. Despite announcing their "indefinite hiatus" earlier this year, bassist Shavo Odadjian says the group is still very much together. He said that it might be another 10 years before the next System record, but they're still definitely going to come back strong. Good to know, but "Elect the Dead" has left me hoping that I won't have to wait a decade to hear Serj Tankian achieve his full potential again.

DOWNLOAD: "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," "Empty Walls"

Jason Silverstein is a junior at Williamsville North.

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