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This article problematizes the affective capacities of popular music to perform tactical and sometimes violent disruptions in conventional thought, especially when these capacities are oriented toward political activism. I offer a critical analysis of "Attack" and "Holy Mountains" (Hypnotize 2005), two songs by Los Angeles heavy metal band System of a Down. I also examine the melding of the disruptive aesthetics of heavy metal with socially conscious lyrics, and contestations over historical memory, specifically the recognition of the Armenian genocide. I ask what potential this music has to signal new and different ways of (re)thinking history and inquire into the questions that arise from such a strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]