Daron Malakian, SYSTEM OF A DOWN‘s guitarist and vocalist, recently spent over two hours with legendary producer Rick Rubin discussing the band’s career, music, and Malakian‘s own musical background. Rubin has a long-standing relationship with SYSTEM OF A DOWN, having signed them to American Recordings and co-produced all five of their albums with Malakian.
During his conversation with Rubin, Malakian discussed the possibility of a new SYSTEM OF A DOWN album, revealing his own reservations about the idea.
“It would have been nice to see where the band would have evolved if we kept putting music out,” Malakian said. “If we put out an album now, it’s just so far away from [Mezmerize and Hypnotize] it doesn’t continue the story to me.”
Rubin likened the idea of new music to “starting a new story,” to which Malakian responded: “There was a time that that might have been something I wanted. I’m not sure how much I want that anymore — I’m sure people won’t be too happy to hear that from me. I’m not at the same place I was maybe 10 years ago.”
During a recent appearance on the SiriusXM program “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” SYSTEM OF A DOWN bassist, Shavarsh “Shavo” Odadjian, talked about the possibility of the band releasing a new studio album.
“I don’t know. [Laughs] We always will talk about it here and there, but I don’t know if this will happen or not,” he said. “I mean, if it does, beautiful. But if it does, it needs to be amazing. It can’t just be us riffing. ‘Cause we’ve got a lot to live up to, bro. It’s a little nerve racking, a part of it. 20 years [ago], the last thing we did, won a Grammy. It needs to really be the greatest it could be. And I’m not saying it can’t be or we’re not up to it — we are.
“Daron [Malakian, SYSTEM OF A DOWN guitarist] probably has thousands, hundreds of songs. Serj‘s [Tankian, SYSTEM OF A DOWN singer] probably got a lot up his sleeve. I personally — I don’t bring complete songs in; I bring riffs that work together, and then we arrange it together. That’s my style of writing when it comes to SYSTEM. And I’ve got a lot stored up.
“So I don’t know. I can’t promise. We haven’t said anything. Like I said, man, there is no pressure. We said, ‘Let’s get together. Let’s play these shows, see how it goes.’ We haven’t done this many shows… Literally, we’re doing more shows this year than we have the last seven years combined. So, let’s do that first and see where that takes us.”
“If we did it, bro, it would have to be agreed upon how it’s gonna work before we even went in,” Shavo continued. “It wouldn’t be like we walked in blindly and just said, ‘Okay, I have a song.’ It wouldn’t be like that. It would be, like, we’d probably say, ‘Okay, this is kind of a strategic… You’ll bring this much, and we’ll do this, and I’ll bring my stuff, and we’ll see how it works, and we’ll split it this way, and whoever writes this will get this much, and whoever writes that…’ You know what I mean? We’d probably have that all on the table before we go out.
“But like I said, I’m just throwing it out there right now. I’m not even saying that it’s happening. You ask the question, and I’m answering it. I hope this doesn’t go into clickbait and say ‘Shavo says we’re making a record.’ We’re not. None of this is confirmed. There’s nothing. We haven’t even talked about it… We’re just kind of assuming if this happens, that could happen. But nothing has been said. Because people will come at me and say, ‘Why did you say that?’ I’ll be, like, ‘I didn’t say that.’ It was taken out of context.”
“But I’ll end it with that,” he added. “Nothing is for sure. I didn’t say we’re making a record. We are going on tour this year. We’re gonna have some fun out there. I can’t wait to go to these cities. I can’t wait to go to South America.”
The 2025 North American tour will begin with two nights at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on August 27-28, featuring special guests KORN. The tour will then move to Soldier Field in Chicago for shows on August 31 and September 1 with AVENGED SEVENFOLD, and conclude at Rogers Stadium in Toronto on September 3 and September 5 with DEFTONES.
SYSTEM OF A DOWN is also set to perform a series of stadium concerts across South America next spring. The “Wake Up!” tour kicks off on April 24 in Bogotá, Colombia, and wraps up on May 10 in São Paulo, Brazil. You can check those dates here.
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