System of a Down have been providing several updates over the last few years to essentially say, there’s no new album. However, this hasn’t stopped the group from performing. While we can at least look forward to seeing them perform, drummer John Dolmayan doesn’t seem too thrilled about their last few shows. Dolmayan recently appeared on Drinks With Johnny, the web show hosted by Avenged Sevenfold bassist Johnny Christ and discussed the band’s somewhat inactivity resulting in not-so-polished performances.
Dolmayan said:
“I’m gonna be honest with you — we played a couple of shows that I was not proud of recently, because we didn’t put in the practice, and we had, like, a skeleton crew,” he explained. “They [are the ones who] set up the equipment, they set up the lights, all the production. All this stuff has to be set up so that we can go up and do our jobs, which is to entertain you ultimately. And these guys all have to work when we’re not working. AVENGED does it the right way — they’ll do an album cycle, they’ll do a hundred shows, or whatever it is in that cycle, which means they can employ these people for a year to two years. SYSTEM does it the complete opposite way and half-assed. We employ people for three to four weeks, which means we get who’s available as opposed to who we wanna work with long term.”
While System of a Down members have been working on their own projects, Dolmayan has confirmed he’s working on a covers album:
“It’s a lot of fun. I worked with really cool people… Again, I’m not trying to create something to compete with System. I’m just doing it because I enjoy playing music. I’m not a songwriter, but I can arrange the fuck out of songs. So, I arranged these songs in a way that I thought was interesting and I listened to songs that I thought maybe there was a lack. Or what would I do if I played this song? What would I do if I was presented this song?”
Watch the full discussion below:
