System Of A Down Music Group

Serj Tankian is a thoughtful, erudite man -- especially for a wild-man rock singer -- but sometimes he's simply overwhelmed by an impulse. His decision to quit studying for law school and become a musician came so suddenly that he literally hit the brakes on his Jeep Wrangler one night in the early 1990s. And in 2005 he was accepting a European MTV Award with his band, System of a Down, when something came over him.

In the mid-1980s, Daron Malakian was a shy youngster living in an apartment near the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine Street, and his parents spent much of their time trying to shield his eyes from the seedy parade of Hollywood's sidewalks. "From the playground of my school," Malakian recalled, "we would see prostitutes and transvestites, guys holding hands, the homeless people, all these things my parents really didn't want me to see."

ON the walls of a quiet Spanish-style house in suburban Glendale hang two paintings that, although largely unknown to art critics, are million-sellers. Titled "Mezmerize" and "Hypnotize," the works are the source images for the covers of two albums released in 2005 by the hard-rock band System of a Down.

System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan sit on a black leather couch, signing autographs, chatting about their favorite local venues and waiting to take the stage. But this isn't their ordinary tour -- it's no Roxy, Astoria or House of Blues. Their fans here are congressional staffers, who ask the rockers to autograph copies of a political magazine while waiting for a congressman to arrive for a political strategy meeting. The L.A.

To understand the new documentary "Screamers," you have to understand, first, about the 97-year-old man who lives in an Armenian old folk's home in Mission Hills. His name is Stepan Haytayan; he is the grandfather of Serj Tankian, the lead singer of System of a Down, one of the world's most critically acclaimed rock bands. Haytayan is a survivor of the first genocide of the 20th century -- the extermination by Turks of an estimated 1.

System OF A DOWN'S singer Serj Tankian and guitarist Daron Malakian are as oddly matched as the components of their band's epically disjointed music. With his Rasputin look and guru's serenity, Tankian sits on a dressing-room couch backstage at the Gibson Amphitheatre and contributes concise observations and epigrams ("The future doesn't exist, my friend -- we're making it right now") to the interview.

Tackling everything from shortsighted social policies to media consolidation to the lemming-like conformity of the masses, System of a Down is one of the most overtly political bands in modern rock, but don't call them a political band. The Los Angeles four-piece prefers the more neutral "art" label.