Serart
Serart

Perhaps not everyone who listens to System Of A Down knows that in the summer of 2003 (in the midst of the band's relaxation phase), vocalist Serj Tankian attempted to embark on new musical paths with “Serart,” a side project in which he experiments with sounds very different from those of his main band. I discovered the album in question just a few months after its release, at a friend's house (one of those enthusiasts who listens to nothing but System or any other work containing one of its members), and I will avoid hearing even a single note of it again. In this project, Serj collaborates with multi-instrumentalist fellow countryman Arto Tunc Boyaciyan, the author of the ghost track of “Toxicity,” aiming to create a very ethnic sound, thus producing sixteen tracks with various alternations between experiments, tribal-jazz atmospheres, Chinese bells, Iranian chants, and some rhythms with percussion like an African village.

The result: boring as hell, really boring as hell, eh... For those who still haven't figured it out, it's as if we completely removed metal from SOAD's songs and multiplied the ethno-tribal reminiscences that influence their work a hundredfold. An album, in my opinion, that only becomes slightly interesting in brief passages, like in “The Walking Experiment” and “Leave Melody Counting Fear,” while for the rest, I consider it a decidedly inconclusive episode (and perhaps a bit half-hearted) in Serj's career, who in previous years had achieved excellent results. But maybe it's me who's being narrow-minded and not freeing my acoustic apparatus, so let's say this: either you love it, or you hate it. I hated it.