Review Summary: One step back for Serj's muisc, One giant leap upwards for Serj's cash flow.
There comes a very difficult time in every vocalist/songwriter’s career, where they must decide whether or not to make their own solo album. For a vocalist like Serj Tankian, it seemed easy enough to make it at least decent, right? His voice is good enough to bring any piece of crap used for music and makes it sound at least average, would I be correct in my assumption? Well that little introduction is probably what had inspired most of the planning of
Elect The Dead, let Serj Tankian’s voice and lyric work take over the album, while the music be done by, you guessed it, Serj Tankian, who had supposedly written some of the music for his old band System of A Down. Well, the only problem with that is Daron, the supposed murder of System of a Down, actually wrote about 85% of System’s old material, and around 99.999999% of the band’s newer material. In fact, even the stuff Serj did work on, he only
co-wrote with Daron, so because of that, it might as well just been Serj being credited for writing maybe one or two tunes and then Daron correcting them for catchiness and the rest being 98% Daron and maybe Serj doing one thing on his piano to get the timing right. In any case, this album proves why Serj didn’t take such a big part in the songwriting; his work on
Elect The Dead is absolutely dull and boring.
Serj and his backing band start things half decently with “Empty Walls”, which contains a notably catchy riff, but soon afterword manages to make a mere verse a chore to listen to. The next bundle of tracks really try hard to capture the insanity and frantic nature of System of A Down, but each one falls down harder than the last. “The Unthinking Majority” seems to start out this somewhat frantically, but with repeated piano parts and boring chugging power chords, just comes way short. “Money” falls short because the chorus sounds completely forced and doesn’t sound natural or even humane safe around the calm, soothing verses. Each song after “Money” seems to follow the exact same formula for the most part, calm-before-the-storm like verse, and then attempted stormy choruses that sound like a mere drizzle by comparison. “Honking Antelope”, “Baby”, “Saving Us”, and to a lesser extent, the second best song on the album “Lie Lie Lie”. The only song on the album that manages to stand out on its own as a truly well written song is “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”, and it is truly an astonishing song to say the least. It starts out with an exotic sounding bass line, and then start to truly riff itself out with some nice effects. Some electronics, a fifties-like piano bridge, and some nice layered vocals later, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” is truly a musical oddity, even by System standards, and manages to succeed on that front. If “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” were a sign for anything though, it is a sign that Serj is just using his very last source of ideas here, and it was only long enough to last through one amazing song.
To ignore the dreadful songwriting for just a moment, another noticeable highlight of this album is Serj’s voice. While it’s merely a decent performance by his high standards, his voice still soars above the music for the most part, and manages to make the album somewhat enjoyable, and at least catchy in vocal hooks. But the problem with Serj’s voice is that he just seems to use the same operatic technique in his singing throughout the album, whereas on his early System albums he had loads upon loads of different and interesting techniques, which included everything from pseudo-rapping to lower range growls. On here, he just relies on his operatic clean vocal, and as good as it is, it gets damn repetitive, especially on an album that lacks so much.
Speaking of lacking, Serj also lacks something that he well-used to have in his early albums; good lyrics. Sure, he’s back on the lyrical assault, and yeah, the lyrics here are better than the last few System albums, but that’s like saying a small piece of crap is better to have than a big piece of crap, of course it’s better, but it’s still a piece of crap. On this album, he just uses somewhat misshapen and mismatched metaphors to direct his attention on the usual political message that he always had. This lyrical method is hit miss, but much more hit than miss. “Empty Walls” is a fine metaphor, because it is more accessible for the listener to ‘get’ so to speak, and to understand what this means, where as songs like “Honking Antelope”, “Beethoven’s Cunt”, and “Lie Lie Lie” will leave the average listener, for the most part, clueless, and maybe even scared.
"When you see that honking antelope,
The secret dance of snakes, the tales of it all"
from "Honking Antelope"
"My baby, my baby
Let me know
Because you love me, you love me
Let me go
And you're my lover, you pay me
Twice my size
And on your knees you lay
In my eyes,"
from "Lie Lie Lie"
I have a serious doubt that Serj put any real inspiration on to this effort. Maybe he did though, maybe he wanted to just be a singer, and sing while he and the rest of the band just constructs simple power chord rock. But probably he just wants some more dough is to make those really ‘artsy’ and ‘intelligent’ music videos that he makes for himself. See that is the entire problem of this album in a nutshell, it is way too self-indulgent. He thinks that, as long as his voice stays up on the highlands, anything can go wrong, and his work will still sound great. Indeed, Serj is deceiving himself, for
Elect The Dead is a miserable, boring, self-indulgent piece of crap with maybe a few good songs and a good vocal performance throughout. He really and truly blunders with this album, proving that he in too deep, and way beyond his prime. If SOAD got back together, it would at least be another Hypnotize, and I’d rather hear an inconsistent subpar album with many highlights, but even more downers, than a, for the most part, consistent subpar album with most of the songs just blending together and sounding weak overall. This album is only recommended for Tankian and SOAD fanboys, because this album is mostly a “phoned in” effort.
What’s Good About Elect The Dead:
- “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” is an amazing song
- Serj’s voice
What’s Bad About Elect The Dead:
- Mediocre Lyrics
- Repetition
- Awful songwriting
- As good as Serj’s voice is, it can damn well get repetitive
