Elect the Dead

Tankian, best known for being the lead singer of the heavy metal band System of a Down, stated that some of the songs on Elect the Dead 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 in 1997, but no other recordings of the song were known to exist. The title track was also recorded by System of a Down during the recording sessions for their 2005 albums Mezmerize and Hypnotize, though this version remains unreleased.

It's very wide sounding — lots of different sounding instruments. The excitement I had making this record was the same excitement I had making the first System record.

The initial single from the album was a two-track promo including "Empty Walls" and "The Unthinking Majority", released on September 10, 2007. Tankian immediately appeared on MTV's "You Rock the Deuce" program. Meanwhile, a music video of "Feed Us" was released in Sweden^[14] and on UK MTV.^[15] The album was released on October 22, 2007, and opened at number 4 with 66,000 US units sold according to the Billboard 200 trade listing.^[16] By September 2010, the album had sold 319,000 copies total.^[17]

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".^[18] Initially, some videos were released as limited edition premiums. All videos (with exception of "Money") 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 an incrementally evolving narrative.

Collectible versions of the album include an instrumental disc offered by Reprise and Serjical Strike Records, and the "final master" from Reprise intended for specific journalists and reviewers. That embargoed disc was labeled "Smart Talk" [a coded reference to the artist's own name].^[19] 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.

An Elect the Dead tour commenced October 12, 2007, at Chicago's Vic Theater. Tankian cautioned fans this production featured a new band, Flying Cunts of Chaos (a.k.a. the F.C.C.), which was not promoting the System of a Down.

In 2009, Tankian did a symphonic tour with an orchestra in order to perform symphonic renditions of most of the songs from Elect the Dead. A recording of this tour titled Elect the Dead Symphony was released on February 23, 2010, in the US.

• Serj Tankian: songwriting, production, engineering, guitars, bass, piano, vocals, synthesizers, drum programming, melodica, bells
• Dan Monti: engineering

• Craig Aaronson & George Tonikian: A&R
• Sako Shahinian: artwork, album packaging design
• Keith Aazami: digipack album packaging design
• Greg Watermann: photography