System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian has announced plans to release a documentary about his music and activism.
The announcement was made in a post on Tankian’s Instagram that reads,
“We’re making a music documentary film about activism and my career so we’ve been looking for old recordings, photos, videos.” Accompanying the post was a screen grab of him playing keyboard in a music video for his first band Forever Young. “Today’s #throwbackfriday comes from my first music gig as keyboardist for a band called Forever Young,” the post continues. “Sorry for the poor quality as it was taken from an old video.”
Over the course of his career, Tankian has been a staunch advocate for social justice. With System of a Down, as well as in his solo work, he helped bring awareness to many cultural and political issues, including the War on Terror, genocide, overpopulation, environmentalism, the prison system and capitalism. His contributions to the awareness of the widely unrecognized Armenian Genocide that forced his grandparents out of Turkey earned him the Armenian Prime Minister’s Medal in 2011. In 2002, Tankian created the Axis Of Justice with Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, an organization his website bio says:
“strives to bring together musicians, fans of music and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice.”
A release date has not yet been announced for the documentary project.
While System of a Down is not technically broken up, the band has not released a new album since 2005’s Mezmerize and Hypnotize. Currently, the band has two scheduled festival appearances coming up, including sets at the Sonic Temple Festival on May 17 and at the Chicago Open Air festival on May 18.
Last month, Tankian released his soundtrack to the 2015 first-person shooter game Midnight Star. On April 13, his third solo album, Harakiri, will be released on vinyl for the first time in a very limited quantity (2000 copies on yellow/black in Europe and 1000 on red/black in the United States) in celebration of Record Store Day.
