The band’s first official release of a professionally recorded song was on a collection called Hye Enk (“we’re Armenian” in English), an Armenian Genocide recognition compilation, in 1997. Khachaturian was replaced by John Dolmayan. In mid-1997, drummer Khachaturian left the band because of a hand injury (he subsequently co-founded The Apex Theory, which included former Soil bassist Dave Hakopyan). At the beginning of 1997, System of a Down recorded their final publicly released demo tape, Demo Tape 3.
Shortly after the event, System of a Down made what is known as Untitled 1995 Demo Tape, which was not commercially released but appeared on file sharing networks around the time of the band’s success with Toxicity about six years later. In early 1995, System played as “Soil” at the Cafe Club Fais Do-Do a nightclub in Los Angeles. The band recruited drummer Ontronik “Andy” Khachaturian, an old school friend of Malakian’s and Odadjian’s who had played with Malakian in a band called Snowblind during their teens. Odadjian switched from guitar to bass and passed on his managerial duties to Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group and its founder David “Beno” Benveniste. The word “victims” was changed to “system” because Odadjian believed that it would appeal to a much wider audience and also because the group wanted their records to be alphabetically shelved closer to their musical heroes, Slayer. The group took its name from a poem that Malakian had written titled “Victims of a Down”. In 1994, after only one live show, and one jam session recording, Hakopyan and Laranio left the band, feeling that it was not going anywhere.Īfter Soil split up, Tankian, Odadjian, and Malakian formed a new band, System of a Down. The band hired Shavo Odadjian (another Rose and Alex Pilibos alumnus) as manager, although he eventually joined Soil as rhythm guitarist. Helium) on bass and Domingo “Dingo” Laranio on drums. They formed a band named Soil with Tankian on vocals and keyboards, Malakian on vocals and guitar, Dave Hakopyan (who later played in The Apex Theory/Mt. Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian attended Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian School as children, although due to their eight-year age difference they did not meet until 1992 while working on separate projects at the same recording studio.
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