Check Out How Your Favorite Musicians Stumbled Into Choosing Their Now-Iconic Names

System Of A Down Is Poetic

Photo Credit: Francesco Castaldo/Archivio Francesco Castaldo/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

You don’t ever expect real, genuine poetry to be flowing from a rap-rock band like System of a Down, but the band’s guitarist Daron Malakian is actually a poet. He wrote the very poem that led to the band’s iconic name. The poem was called “Victims of a Down.”

“It comes from a poem our guitarist, Daron [Malakian], had written called ‘Victims Of A Down’. He brought it to us and ‘System’ was chosen as a better, stronger word because it makes it into the ‘whole’ instead of the people in particular. It’s the society,” said singer Serj Tankian in an interview.