"I look over, and Daron had fallen off the stage and was on the ground. He had completely lost himself." Even a band as huge as System Of A Down had to start somewhere. This is the untold story of Soil

System Of A Down in wild face paint.

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.”