System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan and bassist Shavarsh “Shavo” Odadjian recently spoke about the possibility of the band one day making a follow-up to its “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” LPs, which came out in 2005.
System of A Down members talk about possible new album
In a new interview with São Paulo, Brazil’s 89 FM A Rádio Rock radio station, John said: “I wouldn’t count on a System of A Down album anytime soon. It’s very unlikely that it will happen, but if it does happen, it’ll be because it’s organic and the four of us just decide one day that, okay, we don’t care about what happened in the past. We don’t care if we had differences, either artistically or emotionally. We’re just gonna get together and do it, and it’ll be something that happens spontaneously. Because if we try to plan it, the anxiety involved with that will be too much. It’ll splinter the band too much.”
Shavo added: “It’s been built up too much. The time that has passed is so long, so much that I feel like if it were to happen, like [John] said, it would have to happen without thinking: ‘Let’s do it.’ We go in, we don’t announce it, we don’t talk about it, we do it, and then you hear it without a big news about it. It’s the only way.”
John added: “We do have songs that we worked on several years ago, and they’re pretty incredible.”
Shavo said: “We have it. No one else has it. It’s not recorded.”
The band has toured intermittently since ending its hiatus in 2011 but has yet to record any new music. They have only managed to record two songs in the last 19 years, “Protect The Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz”.
They were released in November 2020 and the tracks were motivated by the conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan, with all proceeds supporting humanitarian efforts in the band’s ancestral homeland of Armenia. Along with other donations from fans on their social pages, they raised over $600,000. In other news, a member of the band has ‘offer’ to quit.