System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian recently scored a new Netflix documentary series about the rise of a white-supremacist, fascist regime with the subtitle Evil on Trial. No, it’s not about Donald Trump’s recent hush money trial, but rather about the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party.
According to Metal Injection, the documentary series, which has the full title of Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, was directed by Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, The Ted Bundy Tapes, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) and based on the 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by journalist William Shirer. Even though Shirer died in 1993 at the age of 89, the docuseries is narrated by an AI version of Shirer, which isn’t remotely creepy at all.
Here’s what Tankian had to say about the series on his Instagram:
“Was truly an honor to be asked by my good friend @joeberlinger to work on the musical score for the upcoming @netflix Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial series.
“Co-composer @vincentpedulla and I were asked by Joe to produce music that was based on culturally relevant Jewish compositions and folk songs, some of them having been written in the ghettos and camps during the Holocaust.
“What you’re hearing now is one of those re-orchestrated and rearranged compositions. This was a very meaningful project to be a part of and I look forward to the series premiere on June 5.”
In an interview with Variety last month, Berlinger described how his morbid fascination with the holocaust led him to his career as a director:
“When I was a teenager, I was exposed to some of the Holocaust liberation footage that’s in the show. And like any young person who sees that footage, I was absolutely horrified. After seeing this footage, I became obsessed with the idea that had I been born in that era, I would have been rounded up and murdered. So I wanted to understand how such evil could have ever taken place, to such a degree that I became a German major in college and fluent in the language. That led to an opportunity to work for an American ad agency in their Frankfurt office, where I found myself on TV commercial sets – that’s where I fell in love with filmmaking.”
Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial is out on Netflix on June 5.