John Dolmayan made a name for himself as the drummer for the highly popular System of a Down. He also loves making fun of people sometimes and is a major troll, especially with his fans. He knows how it is to work with Serj Tankian, who also recently stated that the band has ‘egos.’
In a recent Instagram post, John Dolmayan made it seem as if he was going to quit music in general before revealing that he just planned on switching his toothpaste to Colgate white. Unsurprisingly, quite a few fans on the subreddit for System of a Down were convinced he was retiring but then realised it was all a troll.
Serj Tankian recently talked about the possibility of celebrating the band’s classic album Toxicity with an anniversary tour. He revealed he had reluctance and concerns about large-scale tours due to health issues and personal reasons in an interview with metal injection.
Tankian explained that Toxicity is too short to fill a full tour set by itself. He also mentioned his recent back surgery and ongoing health problems, which make the demanding nature of touring challenging. He feels that the repetitiveness of a full tour can become monotonous and isn’t appealing to him right now. Instead, he’s more interested in doing occasional one-off shows or small-scale performances.
“Toxicity by itself is too short to play as a set. Right, so that’s one. But second is that I have, you know, based on my health issues and kind of redundancy in doing the same thing over and over again in terms of touring, it’s something I’m not very interested in doing at this time. Not just for System, for my own stuff, for orchestra or solo stuff. I just haven’t been touring. I also had back surgery last year.
“I’ve got certain issues that I’m getting over that are health issues that are affecting my mobility. I mean, I walk fine and I’m able to do stuff and I could perform. But the travel of a tour really, really affects me at this point. That and, to be honest with you, it’s not in my creative purview, you know? So a show here and there we’ve done and might still do. But as far as doing a specific thing, it’s not really something where I’m at right now.”
Regarding System of a Down’s future, Tankian was cautious but hopeful. He compared the excitement for new music to someone appreciating a past architectural design and stated that while he’s grateful for the interest, any new work would come in its own time.
“Yeah, I personally focus on the latter because it’s always a compliment [to be asked about a new System of a Down record]. It’s kind of like someone saying, I mean, I don’t know. If you’re an architect and you design this incredible museum and everyone comes back to you and says, ‘when are you going to do a museum again?’ And you’re working on, I don’t know, industrial projects at this point or whatever, but you’re like, oh yeah, I’m grateful that you like that design. That’s rad, you know? And I guess when the opportunity comes up to do a museum again, I’ll do a museum again and that’s exactly what it is.”
