Serj Tankian Approves of Releasing New Old SOAD, Continues to Diss His Bandmates

Do you think Serj Tankian and the other members of System of a Down have it in their rider that they need separate dressing rooms as far apart from each other as possible, the way David Lee Roth and Van Halen reportedly did? Because they’re touring together next year (dates n’ tickets)… and yet it seems like they have no problem publicly talking shit about each other.

Everyone seems to agree that Tankian is the reason the band hasn’t released new music in almost fifteen years. But Tankian, who has all but disowned 2005’s Hypnotize/ Mezmerize set, has consistently made it sound as though he’d like to release another album if that album were up to his creative standards. He has also explicitly accused guitarist Daron Malakian of trying to shut him out of the songwriting process. The general implication of those statements being, “I thought our last albums sucked, and I don’t wanna make anything sucky again, and Daron is pushing for his sucky material really hard, but I ain’t havin’ it.”

And now there’s this: a fan recently started a petition asking System of a Down to release any songs they recorded for a prior album but ultimately decided not to include. And when that fan subsequently made his way to Tankian’s Patreon page and asked if he was aware of the petition, the singer responded…

“For the unreleased Soad songs ? Yes. I’m all for it. Convince everyone else.”

…which is a statement that, once again, throws his bandmates under the bus. Like, “Want new System of a Down music? It’s not my fault you don’t have it.” So. Yeah. I can’t imagine all is hunky-dory behind closed doors with these guys (even if drummer John Dolmayan is Tankian’s brother-in-law).

Will System of a Down release a new album before Tool put out a follow-up to Fear Inoculum? Debate in the comments section.

[via The PRP]