Having released their third LP, Steal This Album – a collection of out takes from the 2001 Toxicity sessions and other previously unreleased material – vocalist Serj Tankian is taking “time off” from System Of A Down.

Instead, the bearded frontman is busying himself with a series of musical and political side projects including a solo album, Serat, on which he is working with Armenian multi-instrumentalist Arto Tuncboyaciyan, as well as devoting time to his own record label, Serjical Strike, which has recently signed three new bands, all of which leaves System Of A Down out of the picture until 2004.

“The new record won’t be out for another year or so,” he confirms. “Why? It’s more fun that way! Not for you? Ah, come on! We did way too much. We did two records in three years – that’s a lot. We never wanted to do that, really.”

Tankian’s politicing is done in tandem with ex Rage Against The Machine, now Audioslave man, Tom Morrello. Together, they set up the Axis Of Justice, an organisation which aims to highlight social injustices worldwide and how they’re being tackled head on by campaigners. The hoped-for end product is an increase in grass roots activism.

“I’m doing what’s in my heart,” says Serj. “I’ve always had a very adverse reaction to injustice. I think it stems from the knowledge of the denial of the Armenian genocide growing up, by the Turkish government as well as successive US administrations, and when you see one truth that’s hidden for political or economic reasons, you tend to open the door to many other injustices.”

These “other injustices” are hi-lighted on The Axis Of Justice website. Tankian and Morello recently broke the law by handing out food to homeless people in Santa Monica. Charitable organisations there are now required to meet restaurant standards, thus making the distribution of food to the needy nigh on impossible. Unsurprisingly, Tankian’s quest for justice also extends to a strong opinion on US foreign policy.

“It’s a bad strategy,” he says of the war on Iraq. “They should just say ‘We’re going in to get the oil – we’re doing this for our corporations. At least in that sense it would be honest. In some ways, I’d say that the Bush administration has been more direct and honest than the Clinton administration in its aggressive techniques, not that that’s a good thing since either way it’s aggression.”

Bush’s tactics may be transparent, but then it is this very transparency,” he believes, “that has allowed the anti-war movement to flourish.

“He may have actually helped foster discontent in American politics by blatantly pushing corporate agendas,” Serj explains. “And I say blatantly, because other administrations did it as well, if on the QT. His association, not only his family, but his secretary of defence and all the people that he’s surrounded himself with in the cabinet, are all major corporate players, mostly from oil companies and other energy companies, some from outside as well. It’s a very incestuous political oligarchy.”

Despite this, the American people’s stance against this war is, he claims, an historic one.

“The Vietnamese war took six or seven years worth of body bags to create an anti-war campaign; this is the first time in America that there’ve been so many anti-war protests before there’s even a war,” he points out. “Most Americans as well as most of the world know the real reason behind Bush’s policy. It doesn’t matter what the excuse is. It’s an interesting time in the world to see a unilateral approach to greed and imperialism, and how the world reacts to it.”