Serj Tankian Tells Apple Music How His New EP Elascticity Came Together in a new Zane Lowe interview.
So these songs I’ve had with me for five, six years, and when they first came to me, I should say, in the format that they did, it was a very punk rock ethos. That made me really feel like they would work with System’s attitude and repertoire. And we tried to make it work and the guys actually liked the songs, a majority of them, but we had a philosophical difference, in terms of moving forward, in terms of how we see the future of the band, so we weren’t able to actually make a record, obviously, needless to say.
Therefore, these songs were sitting there, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to finish them the way that I intended, that I envisioned, and put them out.” at the encouragement of some friends. And they were supposed to come out last year, probably around October, the deal that we had. But then the Artsakh war was going on and we decided with System, to put out those two songs in benefit of our people and get media coverage and whatnot. So we literally just pushed everything personal forward, into the future, so that’s why it’s coming out.
Serj Tankian Tells Apple Music About The EP’s Title Track “Elasticity”…
I think the important thing is not to be afraid. Because we put out “Elasticity” and a lot of people like it because it’s really wild, but I’ve read, the team sends me certain disc jockeys’ response and they’re like, “Not sure what to do with this, especially that vocal in the beginning, it throws me off. It’s making me uncomfortable.” It goes over everything. I like reading that because, as a creator, you’re just like, “Wow, that’s cool. I’m pushing someone’s envelope. They might not like it and it might hurt.”
Serj Tankian Tells Apple Music About His New Song “Your Mom”…
So the song originally was a very specific dissertation on a very specific terrorist network around the world, and so it was so specific that five years later circumstances change and you look at it and you’re like, “Well, that’s not actually exactly what it used to be,” and that kind of a thing. And there’s also the danger of being one song about a specific terrorist organization to the author. Yeah, exactly, the combination of both those ideas made me go, “Maybe there’s another approach I can have to this song, bring in this hybrid approach.” And the hybrid approach became it’s about a terrorist organization and it’s about your mom. Your mom is like the hero in her like 90s and slippers and she can f-king kicks a–. So the whole thing became a surreal hodgepodge of two different ideas, and it’s a little unruly.
