SHAVO ODADJIAN: ‘If A New SYSTEM OF A DOWN Album Happens, It Needs To Be Amazing’

During an appearance on the January 23 episode of SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, SYSTEM OF A DOWN bassist Shavarsh “Shavo” Odadjian was asked if there has been talk of him and his bandmates releasing a new studio album, two decades after the arrival of “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” LPs, which came out in 2005. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “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. 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,” he continued. “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.”Elaborating on what it would take for SYSTEM OF A DOWN to work on a new album, Shavo said: “If we did it, bro, it would have to be agreed upon how it’s gonna work before we even went in. 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.”Shavo added: “But I’ll end it with that. 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.”Last month it was announced that SYSTEM OF A DOWN has added second shows as part of their one-of-a-kind massive stadium events this year. The run of 2025 North American shows will kick off at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on August 27-28 with special guests KORN, as well as two night at Soldier Field in Chicago (August 31-September 1) with AVENGED SEVENFOLD and a final stop at Rogers Stadium in Toronto on September 3 and September 5 with DEFTONES.SYSTEM OF A DOWN will also play a run of South American stadium gigs this spring. The seven-show “Wake Up! South America” tour is slated to kick off on April 24 in Bogota, Colombia at the Estadio Nemésio Camacho El Campin, followed by a show in Cercado De Lima, Peru at the Estadio Nacional. The tour will move on to Chile, Argentina and Brazil, wrapping up with a run of three shows in Curitiba, Rio De Janieiro and São Paulo. The concerts will be SYSTEM OF A DOWN’s first visit to South America since 2015.SYSTEM OF A DOWN has toured intermittently since ending its hiatus in 2011, but has only managed to record two songs in the last 19 years, “Protect The Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz”. Released in November 2020, the tracks were motivated by the conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan, with all proceeds supporting humanitarian efforts in SYSTEM OF A DOWN’s ancestral homeland of Armenia. Along with other donations from fans on their social pages, they raised over $600,000.Tankian addressed the creative differences between him and Malakian while promoting his memoir, “Down With The System”, in an interview with Tom Power, host of “Q” on Canada’s CBC Radio One. Regarding how his relationship with Malakian has evolved over the years, particularly as it relates to their collaborative partnership, he said: “Well, changing the dynamic is basically years of time and the progression of the band, the success of the band, everything that happened in between the day that we met and now, basically, so 25, 30 years. A lot changes in that time. And so I think that’s a part of it.”Daron’s been a lifer and he’s incredibly serious about his music and he’s incredibly protective of his music and vulnerable due to his music,” Serj explained. “All of those things kind of go together. So it’s those things, I think, that created some of the creative differences that we started finding. And it’s also our progression. Listen, when Daron and I started working together, I didn’t really write a lot of instrumental music — I mostly wrote lyrics; I was the lyricist; I was the singer. And he didn’t write any lyrics; he just wrote music. But as time progressed and I played more musical instruments and I started becoming a songwriter/composer and he started writing more lyrics, we started kind of covering each other’s territory. And I was okay with that. If he wrote lyrics, I was trying to encourage him to write more, because I believe in artistic growth. I believe in progression. I don’t believe in things staying the same way, for music’s sake. Otherwise the music becomes the same thing over and over again. That progression is necessary in every artist’s life or in every group’s life. So I was very encouraging of that. And I just wish that I got some of that back. And so that wasn’t the case, and it was disappointing. And it became a creative difference over the band’s path, and whatnot, over time.”