System of a Down just dropped a powerful music video for their song ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’ on Saturday, January 30th.

The video was unveiled during the group’s special livestream fundraising event, as per Pitchfork. The event was set up to aid humanitarian efforts in their ancestral homeland of Armenia, including Armenia Wounded Heroes Fund.

Bassist Shavo Odadjian executive-produced the music, as well as curating the cover and brand art for the project. Alongside Adam Mason, Odadjian directed the new video. It features intense and complementary animation of foreboding hooded black figures menacing a young child. This is interspersed between performance footage of System of a Down, the group looking enraged and performing with fury.

At the time of writing, the powerful video has been viewed on YouTube over 190,000 times after premiering just a few hours ago.

It comes after System of a Down returned to making new music for the first time since 2005 in November of last year. They released two comeback songs then, ‘Protect the Land’ and ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’, with all pledged royalties earned going to the major non-profit Armenia Fund. In total, the group and their fans raised an incredible $600,000 as it stands.

Both ‘Protect the Land’ and ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’ were produced by the group’s guitarist and vocalist Daron Malakian. Protect the Land was originally written by Malakian for the next album with his other project, Scars on Broadway. Genocidal Humanoidz was actually written a few years ago when the group got together for a jam session but it was unfortunately abandoned when Serj Tankian wouldn’t commit to making an album.

Tankian has been busy elsewhere, meanwhile. He recently joined with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello (his Axis of Justice co-founder) to cover post-punk icon’s Gang of Four’s ‘Natural’s Not In It’, a song to be featured on a forthcoming Andy Gill tribute compilation.

Love Rage Against The Machine?

Get the latest Rage Against The Machine news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more

Check out the ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’ music video by System of a Down:

YouTube VideoPlay

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine