Elect the Dead

Elect the Dead is the debut album by rock musician Serj Tankian, lead singer and founding member of Armenian-American metal quartet System of a Down. It was released on October 22, 2007. Alongside Tankian appears Armenian-American coloratura Ani Maldjian, drummers John Dolmayan from System of a Down and B. Brain Mantia of Primus and Guns N' Roses, Dan Monti on guitars, as well as a string section featuring Antonio Pontarelli.

Marketing

The initial single from the album was a 2-track promo including "Empty Walls" and "The Unthinking Majority", released on September 10. Tankian immediately appeared on MTV's "You Rock The Deuce" program. Meanwhile a music-video of "Feed Us" was released in Sweden and on UK MTV. The album was released October 22, 2007, and opened at #4 with 66,000 USA units sold according to the Billboard 200 trade listing. By September 2010 the album had sold 319,000 copies total.

Music-videos of the album's songs were each filmed by discrete directors. Tankian revealed: "I asked each of the directors for their visual interpretation of my work. They were asked not to write treatments and that they could make whatever they liked. The results have been overwhelmingly amazing". Initially some videos were released as 'limited edition' premiums. All videos were later freely offered on Tankian's website and his YouTube channel. Some of these "official videos" were alternate versions released one version at a time- suggesting incrementally evolving narrative.

The Dead

The Dead may refer to:

Arts, entertainment, and media

Film

Literature

Music

Stage productions

See also

Serj Tankian

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Serj Tankian (Western Armenian: Սերժ Թանկեան, pronounced [ˈsɛɾʒ tʰɑnˈkjɑn]; born August 21, 1967) is a Lebanese-born American singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, poet, and political activist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, keyboardist and occasional live rhythm guitarist of the rock band System of a Down, formed in 1994 by four Armenian-American friends.

During his musical career, Tankian has released five albums with System of a Down, one with Arto Tunçboyacıyan (Serart), as well as the five solo albums Elect the Dead, Imperfect Harmonies, Harakiri, Orca, and Jazz-Iz-Christ. A live orchestral version of Elect the Dead incorporating the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra named Elect the Dead Symphony was released. In 2002, Tankian and Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello co-founded a non-profit political activist organization, Axis of Justice. Tankian also founded the music label Serjical Strike Records, and is represented by Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group under System of a Down. On August 12, 2011, Tankian was awarded the Armenian Prime Minister's Medal for his contributions to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and the advancement of music. He is widely considered and ranked as one of the greatest vocalists in metal history, with praise given to his unusual delivery and his wide vocal range. Serj Tankian is currently listed as one of the Top 100 Heavy Metal Vocalists by Hit Parader, ranked at #26. A study conducted by VVN Music found Tankian to possess one of the highest and most diverse vocal ranges, not only in metal, but in all of popular music, with a range of 4.2 octaves.

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a special idiomatic meaning; in this sense it is roughly synonymous with expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words (or possibly a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence—a single unit within a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase appears within a clause, although it is also possible for a phrase to be a clause or to contain a clause within it.

Common and technical use

There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and the like. It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc.

In grammatical analysis, particularly in theories of syntax, a phrase is any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the grammatical structure of a sentence. It does not have to have any special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete grammatical unit. For example, in the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white neck form what is called a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories, which functions as the object of the sentence.

Elect the Dead Symphony

Elect the Dead Symphony is the first live album by System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian. It is available in CD, CD/DVD, LP, and Digital Download formats. It features the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall in Auckland, New Zealand. Orchestral arrangements were by John Psathas. Material for the performance is from Tankian's solo debut, Elect the Dead with some additional previously unreleased songs.

The sole studio track is the first officially released studio recording of "Charades", with the revised title "The Charade". This song was known to have been considered for System of a Down's Hypnotize album and a rehearsal was recorded, a brief excerpt of which appears on the DVD side of that album's dualdisc edition. It was not included on the album, but a live version appeared on the Axis of Justice compilation the following year. The version on Elect the Dead Symphony is the first studio recording of the song to be released, and has also been released as a single. A live version of the song also appears on the album.