I listen to a lot of shit, all the time, including a lot of Sixties pop that I’ve been listening to in the past few years, which has been kind of bleeding through my writing, without losing touch with a lot of the other things that make up System of a Down.

You can’t put your finger on the Darkthrone influence and say, ‘There’s Darkthrone,’ and you can’t put your finger on the Kinks and say, ‘There’s the Kinks!’ But you can see all that kind of happening somewhere. Like, if I pointed out the chorus for “Kill Rock n' Roll”—that melody line is very old Motown. I didn’t know that when I was writing it, but after time went on I was like, ‘Wow, that’s old Motown!’ Because I’d been listening to the Supremes, the Marvelettes, and stuff like that.

—Daron Malakian, Revolver