David Hakopyan has one very vivid memory from the single gig his band, Soil, played. The exact date has been lost to time, but it was sometime during 1994. He’s sure of the venue, though: a New Orleans-style blues club called Fais Do-Do, located on West Adams Boulevard in Mid City, Los Angeles, 10 or 12 miles south of the North Hollywood rehearsal studio that served as Soil’s unofficial HQ.
“We used to invite people to come hang out at the studio,” says David now. “All the bros and homies would come to listen to us play and get stoned, which generated this word-of-mouth buzz that we were doing something cool. So here we were, in this inner-city blues club, surrounded by Armenian kids from Glendale and white kids from the Valley who had travelled down to see this unknown Armenian metal band.”
Most of the gig was a hot, sweaty blur, aside from that one vivid memory. “Right as we started, I’m holding this big bass chord and I realise, ‘Shit, there’s no guitar,’” says David. “I look over, and Daron has fallen off the stage and was on the ground. He had completely lost himself in the intensity of the performance, and hadn’t realised the stage rug ended where it did. He finally climbed back up, and we went straight back in it.”
What the audience at that gig didn’t realise was that they were witnessing an early flicker in the history of one of modern metal’s most successful and acclaimed bands. The Daron who ended up face-first on the floor that night was Daron Malakian, and the singer he was onstage with was a gesticulating, wild-eyed dervish named Serj Tankian. Within a few months, Soil were over, and Daron and Serj had built a new band from the ashes of their former group: System Of A Down.
“We were a good band,” says Domingo Laranio, Soil’s drummer during their short lifetime and the fourth man onstage that night. “I thought those guys would become big, but never as big as they are.”
I thought those guys would become big, but never as big as they are
Domingo Laranio
David Hakopyan was 15 when he met Serj Tankian. Both men were part of the Armenian diaspora spread across East Hollywood and nearby Glendale, though they didn’t know each other. David was auditioning to play bass in a local new wave-inspired band named Forever Young. Serj was Forever Young’s keyboard player. He was eight years older and a university graduate who had abandoned plans to become a lawyer to play music after an early midlife crisis.
“I was unloading my truck and Serj came up with a big cigar in his mouth and said, ‘Hey kid, do you need some help?’” recalls David, who got the job as Forever Young’s bassist. “I was the young, punk kid they took in. They showed me how to smoke cigarettes and be an idiot.”
Forever Young wrote their own songs and had gigs lined up. Just as important to David was the fact that they had a rehearsal space. He had put together another band on the side, Snowblind, featuring his brother Jack and another Armenian friend, drummer Andy Khachaturian.
“On the weekends, the guys from Forever Young would never show up to this rehearsal space, so I started sneaking my guys in,” he says. “It was a hustle.”
Within the small Armenian community was an even smaller group of kids who liked rock and metal. David was one, as was his schoolfriend, a lanky guy named Shavo Odadjian. Another was Daron Malakian, an aspiring singer and guitarist David had met at a party and soon recruited for Snowblind.
“I told him Daron needed a guitarist and a singer, and invited him to come by,” he says. “He came in the following Tuesday. He was a shredder at the time, but he had a very high singing voice that almost sounded like Geddy Lee from Rush.”
David wasn’t the only one who wasn’t focussed on Forever Young. Serj was getting restless: he wanted to sing and write his own songs rather than just play keyboards. He’d recently written his very first song, titled Waco Jesus, a reference to the 1993 siege at a religious compound in Waco, Texas, in which 76 members of the Branch Davidian cult died.
David and Serj began playing together outside of Forever Young, along with Daron Malakian. They found a garage to rehearse in and soon named their new project Soil.
“I remember a cousin of mine attended one of our first jams and said, ‘Man, this guy is a terrible singer, but he has so much heart that I think something is going to happen,’” says David. “And he was right. Serj truly meant what he sang. He was incredibly passionate.”
Domingo Laranio was the odd man out in Soil, at least culturally. He was originally from Hawaii, and had already played in a string of bands both in Honolulu and LA. Like Serj, he was nearly a decade older than the teenage David and Daron. His entry into Soil came via a ‘band needs drummer’ ad in local LA newspaper Music Connection.
“I got to their rehearsal garage and set up my drums, but we didn’t start playing right away,” Domingo says. “Serj insisted on playing me a cassette of this song he had written about Waco – it wasn’t the usual stuff about girls and cars. I could see that Daron and Dave were really young and pretty green, but they had that excitement to them.”
Finally, the talk stopped and the four of them started playing. Domingo was closer in age to Serj, but he recalls feeling an instant musical connection with Daron.
“It was like this lightbulb went on: ‘I can really get a connection with this guy and feed off him,’” says Domingo. “We were just bouncing ideas of each other really fast. It was just the riffs and the energy of the guitar.”
That first jam seemed to be a success. Domingo began taking down his kit, expecting he’d get a call in a few days letting him know their decision.
“I’m packing up my stuff and Daron looked at me and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving because I’m done, right?'’’ And they went, ‘No, no, no, you’re in the band. Stay. Leave everything here.’ That’s not how an audition normally works – you usually get a callback.”
Soil were prolific from the start. Daron shouldered much of the songwriting burden. “He’d sit at home all day watching the soap opera As the World Turns and just write riffs,” says David. “Because Daron was also a singer, he tended to bring in more structurally complete songs. Serj spent every day writing poetry to channel his frustrations.”
It was riff after riff, with Serj shouting
David Hakopyan
The songs Soil were coming up with were a wild clash of unlikely influences. But even at that early stage, the roots of System Of A Down’s music were audible.
“Daron was heavily into Slayer, whereas I was into Frank Zappa,” says David. “It was riff after riff, with Serj shouting. We loved it. I remember one specific song that had 11 distinct parts. It was self-indulgent and a bit goofy, but the lyrics were incredibly strong.”
The job of shaping this mad sound fell in part to Domingo, the most musically experienced member of Soil. “He would construct beats against our parts and push us to write riffs in that style,” says David of the drummer. “To this day, Daron cites him as one of his biggest influences.”
The LA music scene at the time was in a period of transformation. Hair metal’s imperious reign over the Sunset Strip was long over, replaced by an emerging strain of alternative metal – Rage Against The Machine were the new kings of the scene, while Tool were making waves.
Soil themselves were creating their own mini-scene, centred around their North Hollywood rehearsal space. “We’d smoke weed, get wasted, and write music every single day for months on end,” says David. “We would just invite people to come hang out at the studio.”
One of those people was David’s old school friend, Shavo Odadjian. “Shavo was there the very first time we jammed,” says David. “He watched us play and said, ‘Dude, this is dope. What you guys are doing is great. I want to be a part of it and help push it.’”
Shavo played rhythm guitar at the time, but he was never a member of the band. Instead, he took on the role of de facto manager and hype man. It was a role he took seriously. “Shavo was like our cheerleader,” says Domingo.
It wasn’t just Soil’s buddies who recognised they had something going on. “We had this roll-up door at the rehearsal garage, which we kept up while we played,” says Domingo. “One day we were jamming and this older white guy stopped outside and just stood there. We all stared at him, and he went, ‘Wow, that sounds really good.’”
They never found out who the passer-by was. But his instincts were on the money.
No one involved in Soil can remember exactly how long the band lasted. Serj Tankian has put it in previous interviews at eight months. David Hakopyan says it could be a year or even a little longer. The only thing people agree on is that they played just one show, that gig at Fais Do-Do where Daron fell offstage.
Soil ended when both Domingo and David left. The drummer’s departure was precipitated by a massive 6.7 earthquake that hit the San Fernando Valley in early 1994 that left 60 people dead.
“My wife was pregnant and it scared the shit out of her,” says the drummer. “She wanted out of LA. I had to prioritise my family. Serj was, like, ‘What do I need to do to keep you here? Find you a place to live?’ It wasn’t a matter of not wanting to stay. It was either leave the band or get divorced.” Domingo and his wife eventually moved back to Hawaii.
David had little choice in the matter of leaving Soil either, though for different reasons. “I was asked to leave,” he says. “I remember them telling me, ‘You aren’t angry enough, you don’t play angry.’ I was, like, ‘I’m sorry, I'm not that angry a person.”’
“I was sad,” he continues. “It was like being a kid and your friends ask you to stop coming to the clubhouse. But I called Shavo and said, ‘I think you could step in as bass player, you’re incredibly excited about the project as well as just managing it,” he says. “He thought it was a cool idea.”
David quickly landed in a new group, Middle Earth, whose line-up included another Armenian kid, a drummer named John Dolmayan. Daron, Serj and Shavo, meanwhile, recruited Andy Khachaturian, who had played with David and Daron in Snowblind, to replace the departed Domingo.
I was sad. It was like being a kid and your friends ask you to stop coming to the clubhouse
David Hakopyan
The newly christened System Of A Down – a name taken from a poem Daron had written titled Victims Of A Down – played their debut gig on May 28, 1995, at Sunset Strip club The Roxy. That show featured several tracks that would eventually appear on System’s self-titled 1998 debut album, including Sugar, Suite-Pee, P.L.U.C.K and the song named after their previous band, Soil.
“It was a Sunday night, and we had just finished recording a demo for Middle Earth,” says David, who was at that first show. “I told John that we needed to go support my friends' new project. John just did not like their performance at all. He had this look on his face like he was constipated.”
As with Soil, System would throw open the doors of the rehearsal space they shared with Middle Earth to friends and fans. “Word-of-mouth spread among local kids that you could grab some beers and spend the entire night hanging out at the System or Middle Earth studio while we jammed,” says David.
System began playing gigs in Hollywood and beyond. The buzz was turbocharged by Shavo, who hustled their name around town, helping secure gigs at venues such as the Whisky A Go-Go and the Coconut Teazer as well as passing out flyers and copies of their first two demos tapes to fans to circulate. “Those kids were incredibly prominent in that early scene, handing out flyers everywhere,” says David.
By 1996, Shavo had handed over the reins to hotshot young manager David ‘Beno’ Benveniste, becoming his first clients. Labels began circling, among them American Recordings. The latter’s boss saw them play at the Viper Room.
“I laughed the whole show,” American Records boss Rick Rubin told YouTuber Rick Beato. “It was ridiculous! But I loved it. But any thoughts of, ‘This could be big,’ you can’t have that thought. It would be insane.”
Word had filtered through to Domingo Laranio in Hawaii that his old bandmates were on the verge of getting a deal.
“The first inkling I got was when people back then started telling me, ‘Somebody from a record company is taking them out to steak and lobster dinners and pitching to them.’ I was thinking, ‘All right!’ I was happy for them.”
There was one problem, namely issues with drummer Andy Khachaturian. “I immediately told John that he needed to step in because they were preparing to showcase for Rick Rubin,” says David. “John was reluctant, but I insisted he do it because they needed his calibre of drumming.”
John Dolmayan took the job, System Of A Down signed to American Recordings soon after, and their self-titled debut album came out in 1998 to widespread acclaim in the metal press. These weird Armenian kids who sounded like Slayer colliding with Frank Zappa had made it.
David Hakopyan, who went on to form a new band, The Apex Theory with Andy Khachaturian and currently fronts Antenna The End, is still friends with his with his old bandmates. He’s sitting on a tape of what turned out to be Soil’s final rehearsal. “About two or three years ago, Serj asked me to digitise it, though I don’t know if it will ever be released,” says.
His former Soil bandmate Domingo Laranio, the man who chose family over potential fame, looks back on his part in System Of A Down’s early history with a similar lack of regret. “You think about how much your life could have changed. But would you change what you have now, if it meant you never met your wife and your kids? It would mean a whole different timeline. These people were my friends. I’m just happy for them."
