For many musicians of a certain generation, KISS was the entry point to heavy rock—not necessarily because of the riffs, but because of the spectacle. System Of A Down guitarist and songwriter Daron Malakian is no exception. In a deep-dive conversation on producer Rick Rubin‘s podcast “Tetragrammaton,” Malakian explored the roots of his musical identity, revealing that his obsession with heavy metal began with sheer terror at the age of three.
Malakian explained that long before he heard a single note of music, the visual impact of Gene Simmons hooked him. The theatricality of the band wasn’t just entertainment; for a toddler, it was a frightening, magnetic force.
“It’s the image of [Gene Simmons‘ character] the Demon, the fire breathing, the blood, that was huge to the kids that grew up with that and then started bands,” Malakian told Rubin (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “It was huge for me. I mean, I was three years old, three or four years old, when I first saw KISS. It scared the s**t out of me, but I was just obsessed with it. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I’d never heard a song yet even at that point. Just the image, just seeing them [caught my attention].”
He noted that while other bands might have been sonically heavier, KISS had an unmatched visual edge. “Maybe KISS‘ music wasn’t as heavy as what Black Sabbath was doing, but Black Sabbath didn’t look like KISS.”
Malakian also reflected on the pre-internet era, where the lack of information heightened the mystique of rock stars. Without social media to humanize them, figures like Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne seemed like supernatural entities to young fans.
“People [were] starting to accuse these bands of being devil worshipers, which was also something that was appealing to me as a five-year-old,” Malakian admitted. “And you were, like, ‘Are they? Were they?’ Like KISS, the Demon. Is this guy really — he lives like this? Is this really his life? Does he walk around the street like this? We didn’t have the Internet back then. We didn’t have social media where everybody sees the person’s life and what they are off stage.”
This ambiguity allowed his imagination to run wild. “In my head Ozzy [Osbourne] was, like, this, ‘Wow, dude.’ This guy was not even from this planet… I was very young, so in my head they were a f**king cartoon. I was still watching cartoons at this time of my life.”
The conversation touched on the challenge of acquiring “evil” albums under the watchful eye of a parent. Malakian recalled the strategic maneuvering required to get his hands on metal records without alarming his mother.
“I would take my mom to the record store, and the bands started playing into the Satanic thing and Iron Maiden had Eddie, the mascot. It was always these evil album covers… But I always wanted to get those albums, but I knew if I took those albums to my mom, she wouldn’t buy ’em for me,” he explained.
To bypass this, he would opt for safer purchases like Def Leppard while relying on family connections for the heavier stuff.
“So I would like try to go to this safer [route, like], Def Leppard‘s Pyromania, which didn’t have that on there… But I had my way of getting those albums to me through an older cousin or whatever. They would record them on a cassette that didn’t have the album cover. So I still get to listen to, like, Dio Holy Diver, because the album cover for that is, like, the devil has this priest in chains.”
