Serj Tankian has been doing tons of press regarding his new book Down With The System. Naturally, this means tons of talk about System Of A Down and their lack of a new album for damn near 20 years.
Tankian recently revealed that he offered to leave System Of A Down in 2017 if the band could find a new singer, and touched a little on his differences with guitarist Daron Malakian. Now in an interview with Spin, Tankian revealed that he and Malakian's ideas over whose material should be worked on were a pain point within the band.
"I was desperate to collaborate, to be creative, but everything within the band felt rigid and inflexible," wrote Tankian. "If I mentioned that I had a song I wanted us to take a crack at, Daron would never outright refuse, but it was always 'Let's work on that one next week,' or 'How about we finish up this batch of songs first?' We rarely ever seemed to get to my songs."
Tankian adds that he was ready to work on new material in 2018 and came in with a "bullet-pointed manifesto" outlining his terms, which included that a new record feature half his songs and half Malakian's. Obviously that didn't work out and here we are. On the future of System Of A Down, Tankian seems… slightly optemistic?
"Daron defines himself as the primary songwriter for System. It's important to him. Will that ever change? I don't know. But I don't see it negatively anymore because I understand it better. That doesn't mean I have to create music in that capacity. As for a future System record, the saying goes, 'Nobody knows!'"
Elaborating on the creative wall, Tankian simply said he's not interested in making the same album over and over again: "Bands aren't meant to do the same thing over and over. I never thought bands should last forever because that's a detriment to the art. It creates redundancy and repetition. Sure, there's exceptions, and I don't want to sound like a dick and take away from what people love to do, but I think most artists should just make x number of records. That said, I love seeing artists collaborate, like when Chris Cornell did Temple of the Dog."
