System Of A Down returned to the live stage recently and have upcoming stadium dates for August and September. Despite the band becoming active again, fans are still wondering when and if they will ever do another full-length album. Their last studio efforts came in 2005.
Recently, guitarist and key songwriter Daron Malakian was a guest on Talk Is Jericho, and he detailed why he and the band have been so hesitant to add to their recorded legacy.
“Well, we could do it, and it might even be good. I don’t know,” he told Chris Jericho. “But if you listen to even those five records that we have, if you listen to the first album to ‘Toxicity’, there is a difference between them. There was an evolution happening. And if I have to say one thing that the hiatus was something that… I wasn’t always down with that hiatus, but whatever — it is what it is. Every band has a different story. There was a time I was a little bit more pissed off about it. Now I kind of am, like, it is what it is.”
Malakian continued: “But what I was pissed off about was that we didn’t get a chance to continue that evolution. ‘Cause I think we were capable of that. I think you’ve got some bands that make the same album over and over and over again. We would not have been that band. We kept our sound, but that sound would’ve gone into different places.”
The guitarist also said that lost momentum due to their hiatus has left him pondering where exactly the band should pick up from when it comes to new material. “So that’s my only regret, that we didn’t get a chance to (keep up our evolution). And so that’s why I said what I said, that making an album 20, 25 years later, where do you pick up from?”
Malakian has a new project, Daron Malakian and Scars On Broadway. Their new album “Addicted To The Violence” is out now. Malakian’s full Talk Is Jericho interview can be viewed below.
