System Of A Down had released just one radio single, the jazzy post-hardcore oddity Sugar, when they flew to Europe in October 1998 to open for Slayer on tour. Having already supported them in the States, System guitarist Daron Malakian had developed a strategy for getting the thrash giants’ impatient fans to pay attention.
“I figured out that the best way of dealing with them was to challenge them a little bit,” he told me for the 2014 book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History Of Metal. “I’d encouraged them to heckle us, and if they weren’t yelling, ‘SLAYERRRR!’ by the middle of our show, I’d call them a bunch of pussies. I wanted to give them a bit of a hard time before they gave us a hard time.”
