In 2020, System Of A Down surprised fans when they released two new songs to benefit humanitarian efforts in Armenia. It marked the first new music from the band since 2005, however it seems unlikely the band will do anything further.
In a new interview with Revolver, System Of A Down singer Serj Tankian talked about a wide variety of topics including how fans yell “Wake up!” at him referencing the first line to the band’s mega-hit, “Chop Suey.” “People will scare the shit outta me and yell ‘wake up’ behind me like, somewhere, wherever, in public,” he said. “[They’re] like ‘WAKE UP!’ [and] I’m like ‘F*ck, dude!… Really?!?? Like, ‘Wow, hey… I’m glad you’re excited, but don’t do that!”
He also talked about the resurgence of bands that rose to fame in the early 2000s. “Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Deftones – like those combination of bands, pretty much all from [the] Los Angeles area, were the heavy hitters of our peers coming up at that time,” he said. “Those are some of the bands that really changed the sound, the scene, and what was going on when we were coming up.”
Tankien was asked to define nü-metal as a genre. “Nü-Metal would probably be… If I was to find a particular definition for it, it would be: Low bass, low tempo, dark, metal music that came out of LA in [the early 2000s].”
