Serj Tankian revealed that fans have been ‘driven to tears’ by the two new System of a Down songs in a new radio interview.
Tankian told Triple J “Just because the band hasn’t put out music in all this time, most people assume that our relationship is sour. It’s really not. We tour together. We’re friends. My drummer is my brother-in-law. Our kids all play together.
Daron doesn’t have kids, but everyone else’s kids play together. So we’re all like family, to be honest with you. So there was no weirdness to it. It’s just we haven’t been able to see creatively eye-to-eye to continue creating with the band, which is fine. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get together and do something for a cause; that doesn’t mean you can’t get together and tour and have some fun.”
Serj was unsured about more new System music, “I don’t know, because right now we’re focused on what’s going on in Armenia. There’s a huge humanitarian catastrophe. We’re still focused on raising funds, raising awareness about this. Time will tell whether this leads to something else or not.”
Tankian also talked about how the new System songs have gone over with fans, “The fan response has been absolutely incredible. As soon as we released the songs, it really blew up all over the Internet. And it did what we wanted to do, which is basically break into Azerbaijan’s disinformation campaign. Especially our video for ‘Protect The Land’ really hit it home, and people were, like, ‘Wow, I’m crying.
I didn’t know about this. How can I help?’ And fans around the world were excited about the music, obviously, and the messaging is always part of the music. And we did a video together that we released, explaining why we did this, why it’s important to us, what’s going on. So all of it kind of really came together to spike and make an impact.
And also, I’ve heard from friends that not only did it play in Armenia and Artsakh, but it was even played on the frontlines and gave people protecting their families a little something saying that we’re with you, that you’re not alone on these lines against a better-equipped, bigger-army enemy that is trying to kill you and your family.”
