On Monday April 6, thousands of people gathered at The Forum in Inglewood for System of a Down’s (SOAD) kickoff concert for their Wake up the Souls tour, in commemoration of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

The rock band will be traveling the world and playing their music in order to educate people about the upcoming centennial of the Armenian Genocide, and they decided to start the first tour near their hometown.

By 8:30 p.m.t, when the band announced they were going on stage, nearly all 17,500 seats in the Forum had been filled up, and there was a mosh pit of at least 1,000 people in front of the stage as well.

A few minutes later, all the lights turned off, and the large televisions above the stage started playing an informational video about the politics of the Armenian Genocide, as well other genocides all over the world.

After the ending of the video, the band members came up on stage and started performing their song “Holy Mountains” which is about the cruelty of the Ottoman Empire during the genocide.

As the night went on, the band continued to play some of their most popular songs criticizing modern day society. As soon as the crowd heard the introductory music for the songs they recognized, they would cheer, and start to sing along while pumping their fists and banging their heads.

Lead singer Serj Tankian amazingly sang for two whole hours. Guitarist Daron Malakian joined in at some points, and even sang some of his own solos.The sound of Shavo Odadjian’s bass blasted through the Forum, and John Dolmayan controlled everybody’s heartbeats with the drums.

The best part of the night was when the band began to sing “Sartarabad,” an Armenian song about the battle that eventually ended the genocide, and all the non-Armenian fans who didn’t know the meaning of the song asked me to explain it to them.

Towards the end of the night, before Malakian started his solo “Lost in Hollywood” he spoke about his grandmother and her experience as a genocide survivor, and since that day would have been her 109th birthday he dedicated the song to her.

Many in the crowd pulled out their phones and started waving them around as if they were lighters, in order to pay tribute to the musicians’ family. But as soon as the soft melancholic song was over, they re-entered their hard rock melody for the rest of the concert.

By the time the band closed the concert with “Toxicity,” they had been playing for over two hours (and as lead singer Serj Tankian announced it was longer than they’ve ever played before!). The concert was amazing, and it was great to see so many people all coming together to enjoy an event.