SERJ TANKIAN Releases Music Video For New Single 'A.F. Day'

Serj Tankian, lead singer and lyricist for the Grammy Award-winning rock band SYSTEM OF A DOWN, has released his new single and video "A.F. Day" via Gibson Records. The track, which will also appear on Serj's forthcoming EP titled "Foundations" — due in the fall — fits right into the singer-songwriter's canon and his ability to dive straight into longstanding cultural issues and thoughts that have smoldered to the top of our daily reality demanding to be acknowledged.

Speaking about the new track, Serj reveals: "This is a song I wrote in the early days of SYSTEM OF A DOWN that I never released. The majority of the instrumentation and vocals are recordings from that time. Dystopian in mood, it's a reflection of the angst and anti-authoritarian attitude I had to conformity."

The new single and forthcoming EP kick off a massive year for Tankian, which has already seen him release his exhilarating, thoughtful, and beautifully written debut memoir "Down With The System" via Hachette Books, with remaining book events in Los Angeles at Barnes and Noble-The Grove May 21 and at Book Soup on May 24.

The 56-year-old Lebanese-born Armenian-American musician and songwriter told Metal Hammer magazine about "Foundations": "It's five songs. We just shot five videos for it last week with members of the FCC, my back-up band, which was really fun, and we're going to put it out in September."

He added: "The reason I'm putting it out is that archival nature of writing a book made me look into songs from different periods of time. 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. A couple of the songs are from my early 2007-2008 solo record period, but didn't fit the record ['Elect The Dead', released in October 2007].

"It's an interesting retrospective of rock music that I've never released from different times, and it's called 'Foundations' basically because it's the founding of my musical life," Serj added. "They're very interesting songs, very different from each other: one is really heavy, one is like, really progressive, there's just different elements to each of them. But I think they work in tandem."

Tankian is best known as the lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning rock band SYSTEM OF A DOWN, but he is also a solo artist, composer, activist, painter, poet, and filmmaker. Since launching on to the rock scene in 1993, he's performed for millions of fans and sold more than 42 million albums worldwide. He's also a proud Armenian-American and a dedicated activist; along with Tom Morello, Tankian co-founded the non-profit organization Axis Of Justice, which strived to bring together musicians, music fans, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice. He has composed scores for many films and television series, had his paintings exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and New Zealand, and released two books of his own poetry. He has also been an executive producer on multiple documentaries, including "I Am Not Alone", which tells the story of Armenia's 2018 revolution and which won awards at the Toronto International Film Festival, DOC NYC, American Film Institute Festival, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival, among others. Tankian lives with his wife and his son, splitting their time between Los Angeles and New Zealand.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN has toured intermittently since ending its hiatus in 2011, but has only managed to record two songs in the last 19 years, "Protect The Land" and "Genocidal Humanoidz". Released in November 2020, the tracks were motivated by the conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan, with all proceeds supporting humanitarian efforts in SYSTEM OF A DOWN's ancestral homeland of Armenia. Along with other donations from fans on their social pages, they raised over $600,000.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN co-headlined the second installment of the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas on Saturday, April 27.

The quartet will next co-headline a one-off concert with DEFTONES at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California on August 17.

Photo credit: Travis Shinn