As is apparent from his memoir, Down with the System, Serj Tankian has had an interesting life. Then he became a rock star. Then he became a New Zealand resident.
His System of a Down was one of the biggest American metal bands of the late 1990s-early 2000s. The group was formed by four Armenian-American guys who had mostly all attended the same Armenian school in Los Angeles.
Those roots gave their moshpit-friendly, heavy rock a distinctive melodic sense. By the time Tankian called a hiatus on the band in 2006, they had sold 40 million albums. These days, there are occasional live reunions. Throughout and since, frontman Tankian has been vocal, musically and politically, in the campaign for recognition of the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire in World War I, during the foundation
