Singer Serj Tankian, front man of the band System of a Down, in concert at Firenze Rocks Festival. Florence, Italy. 25th June 2017 (Photo by Francesco Castaldo/Archivio Francesco Castaldo/Mondadori via Getty Images)
Serj Tankian calls Imagine Dragons “not good human beings” following controversial show
System of a Down leader Serj Tankian has lashed out at Imagine Dragons for performing a show in Azerbaijan, following a previous open letter urging them not to play there.
Tankian penned the letter in August last year and encouraged the American group to reconsider their plans to perform in the country due to a “humanitarian catastrophe” occurring in their “petro-oligarchic dictatorial regime.”
The singer also revealed at the time that there “was no response”, to which he felt “forced to publicize this letter.” Adding: “Maybe they felt they had a legal liability to play the show, maybe they just don’t care. My whole life I have been an advocate for genocide recognition and have always said there has to be a price to pay for Genocidal regimes or deniers.”
After Imagine Dragons went ahead with the show last September, Tankian recently told Metal Hammer: “I don’t understand that type of thinking.” He added that, while he isn’t “a judge” for people to “tell bands where to play”, there must be a line drawn when it concerns countries that “commit ethnic cleansing when Azerbaijan was starving the 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and not allowing any food or medicine in.”
He continued: “As an artist, if I found that out, there is no fucking way I could have gone and played that show. But some artists do. And I don’t know what to say about those artists. I don’t respect them as human beings. Fuck their art, they’re not good human beings, as far as I’m concerned.”
Tankian and System of a Down have long spoken out against Azerbaijan, and released ‘Protect the Land’ and ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’ in 2020 to raise awareness for “serious war being perpetrated upon our cultural homelands of Artsakh and Armenia.”
In 2022, the band released a statement condemning Azerbaijan for its act of “evil aggression” against Armenia, explaining: “As a band, we have always done our best to entertain and inform. We have friends and family in harms way in Armenia right now and are extremely worried and concerned for the safety of our people and country.”
They also noted that, unlike the war in Ukraine, “the enemy is not Russian so Western press has been slow to react and has even made the deadly mistake of both-sidisms, treating the attack as a border dispute when it is clearly a deadly attack on the sovereign state of Armenia.”
Concluding: “We are asking for your help in spreading the word about this evil aggression by Azerbaijan, bolstered by Turkey, the country that committed genocide against our people.”
