In his new solo single, "Justice Will Shine On", Serj Tankian, the frontman of System of a Down, delves into the generational anguish experienced by his ancestors in the wake of the Armenian Genocide. The song has a grimly evergreen theme that will resonate with not only Serj's and other Armenians' generational trauma, but of many who have faced mass systemic violence at the hands of oppressors.
The song contains echoes of a 2015 interview with The New Statesman, where Tankian had this to say to journalist and fellow Armenian Anoosh Chakelian:
"My grandfather from my mother’s side ended up in an American orphanage in Greece and eventually made his way to Lebanon, and my grandmother from my mother’s side – she and her grandmother were in the pogroms and they were saved by a Turkish mayor who put his life on the line to hide them and save them and so they survived that way. And my grandmother and grandfather from my dad’s side had both worked on the German-Baghdad railways, they were building this huge railway to the east from Turkey. So that’s how they were able to survive. Especially my grandfather who lived to be 97, he was very clear about what happened to his family.”
Tankian has referenced this generational trauma within System Of A Down's catalog as well as in his own solo material, but rarely as explicitly as in "Justice Will Shine On". The song begins with Tankian asking his grandfather to recount his childhood before the genocide, gradually building into a powerful expression of anger, evident in the music video. "We are the children of all the survivors/Justice will shine on" Tankian sings in a sharp melody over intense riffs and driving percussion. "We'll never let you forget the past/Of the children that cannot grow/You will pay with a million and a half regrets of the atrocities that you sow."
Serj and System Of A Down are no strangers to speaking out on atrocities committed against Armenians; the band have for years acted as staunch advocates for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by other nations. “I think it’s about the necessity to bring justice to this issue,” Tankian told The New Statesman in 2015. “And also to bring focus and attention to genocide in general. We’ve seen it happening today, we’ve seen it happening in recent history, in the last 15, 20 years… it’s still occurring. Irrespective of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Darfur, and Cambodia, all this stuff is still occurring. So that’s important to me, because that’s modern, that’s not World War I, that’s now.”
"Justice Will Shine On" is the second release from Tankian’s upcoming EP, Foundations; it comes in the wake of "A.F. Day", which we reviewed in May.
“The reason I’m putting [Foundations] out is that archival nature of writing a book made me look into songs from different periods of time,” Tankian told Metal Hammer in April. “So one of the songs is from early System days, for example, that I’ve never put out, that I’d never worked with System on. It’s called Foundations basically because it’s the founding of my musical life.”
Foundations will be released by Gibson Records on September 27. Preorders are available now. Check out the music video for "Justice Will Shine On" below.
