Elect the Dead
| Elect the Dead | ||||
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| Studio album by Serj Tankian | ||||
| Released | October 22, 2007 | |||
| Recorded | The Pass Los Angeles, CA | |||
| Genre | Alternative metal, progressive metal, art rock, experimental rock, progressive rock, nu metal | |||
| Length | 45:03 | |||
| Label | Serjical Strike, Reprise | |||
| Producer | Serj Tankian | |||
| Serj Tankian chronology | ||||
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| Alternative covers | ||||
Alternative cover.
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Special Edition cover.
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| Singles from Elect the Dead | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | (68%) |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AbsolutePunk | (69%) |
| Allmusic |   |
| Billboard | (favorable) |
| Robert Christgau |  |
| IGN | (7.1/10) |
| Kerrang | |
| Music Emissions |  |
| NME |
  (10/27/2007, p.39)
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| Rolling Stone | |
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.
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.
Collectible versions of the album include an instrumental disk offered by Serjical Strike/Reprise Records; and the "final master" from Reprise intended for specific journalists and reviewers. That embargoed disk was labeled "Smart Talk" [a coded reference to the artist's own name]. Previously an undated, un-mastered 'Smart Talk' promo featured these same 'final versions' of the songs; but the sequence of tracks ten and eleven was juxtaposed.
Tankian stated that some of these songs were new, and others had developed earlier. An acoustic version of "Blue" was released on the album's 'special edition bonus disc'. The original version appeared on System Of A Down's fourth demo tape but had not been recorded otherwise.
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Wikipedia