Some of the running gags in rock and metal regarding long-awaited albums usually include bands like Tool or Necrophagist which haven’t released any new music in years, despite being active or at least officially not dead. But many forget that there’s another band that have already reached 11 years since they released a new album but are still an active live band, and that’s System of a Down.
About a year ago during an interview with bassist Shavo Odadjian, he stated that the band had some new songs written and were hoping to hit the studio to record them. Obviously that hasn’t happened maybe because of singer Serj Tankian’s busy schedule focusing with his own stuff or anything non-SOAD related. But during an interview with Rolling Stone, Tankian gave an update regarding the band saying the following:
“We’re communicating and trying to see if we can bring our material together. There’s definitely a lot of communication going on, a lot of back and forth. I can’t make a statement in terms of whether we’re going to have a record or not, because we haven’t gone into the studio and done it. But there’s definitely communication going on, songs being played to each other and all that stuff, so it’s good. We’ll see what happens.”
He also stated that the new album may not be the same as their 2005 record Hypnotize and explains how the process work by stating:
“I think it would be great to create something brand new in a new direction. It would be very exciting, but everyone’s got to be on board, on the same page, and it’s got to be done in a way so that everyone is happy. If we can do that, we’ll do it.”
“Even with System [of a Down], I always wrote the songs by myself in my own studio,” he said. “I would write the songs, and have the vocals, have the whole arrangement done, then I’d take it to the band. But I’d still work the song from its inception to full form by myself. This is something I’d been doing for a very long time.”
This has a very similar ring to what Tool do for their songwriting, particularly on the vocal part as it appears both Tankian and Tool’s frontman Maynard James Keenan are the ones holding the reins on the whole process. It also appears that everything will depend on his time to do that before bringing in the band and share his ideas with them. Meanwhile, you can listen to the new song he definitely had time to write called “Artsakh.”
