In his recently released memoir, “Down With The System”, Serj Tankian revealed that his SYSTEM OF A DOWN bandmates had auditioned a new vocalist after he had asked out of the group in 2017. Serj said that his disdain for touring led to his decision to tell his bandmates to carry on without him so they could continue living their dream. Tankian later learned that the band had begun looking at new singers, and he also shared that in “more recent years”, he had pitched a close friend as a potential replacement but he didn’t think the band ever seriously considered the offer.
During an appearance on Ultimate Guitar’s podcast “On The Record”, SYSTEM OF A DOWN guitarist/vocalist Daron Malakian was asked about Tankian‘s revelation about a possible replacement singer in SYSTEM and why it ultimately didn’t pan out. Daron said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It was something that I never really wanted to do. For me, SYSTEM OF A DOWN is us four. If one of us four isn’t doing SYSTEM OF A DOWN, I don’t really wanna do SYSTEM OF A DOWN. Did we think about that? Sure. But did we really pursue it deeply? No. We tried. I don’t wanna get into names. We tried, and whoever we tried, he sounded good.”
Malakian continued: “People would think, ‘Oh, Daron is the one that would want that.’ I was the one that was most against it. I was, like, ‘I don’t wanna look to my left and see other people.’ SYSTEM is SYSTEM, and if that’s not gonna be SYSTEM, then I don’t know if that’s the SYSTEM I wanna be a part of.
“But, yeah, all that kind of happened because there was a time we were kind of, like, ‘Well…’ ‘Cause when we took our hiatus, we didn’t know what was gonna happen. Some of us expected that it might only have been a couple years and maybe we would’ve come back.”
According to Daron, he has always maintained a positive relationship with his SYSTEM bandmates Tankian, drummer John Dolmayan and bassist Shavarsh “Shavo” Odadjian. “Look, man, we all get along really well now,” he said. “But, yeah, through the years there’s been frustrations with each other, for one reason or another. Some of it’s [Serj‘s] fault, some of it’s my fault, some of it’s John‘s fault, some of it’s Shavo‘s fault. It’s not all, like, ‘Oh, it’s just between Daron and Serj.’ It’s a band, and we have four really different personalities in the band. But now we get along really well. The thing is, as friends, we’ve always gotten along. It’s band politics and the band is where our disagreements were. We never really had problems with each other outside of the band. ‘Cause you’ve got some people that are, like, ‘I can’t stand to be in the room with that guy.’ We were never that — we were never that. We always had respect for each other. We always loved each other. We always considered each other brothers. And still are, and still feel that way, and we’re still proud of what we’ve achieved with each other as a band and as four Armenian guys too; that’s also something.
“So yeah, I’m not interested or really kind of never was interested [in having a different singer in SYSTEM OF A DOWN],” Daron revealed. “I think Serj might have said something in his book about [how the guy we tried out not ended up not working out] because the guy couldn’t do the growls or something, and that’s why we didn’t [pick him to replace Serj], and that’s not true. [Serj] and I have never had this conversation of why it didn’t happen. But really the reason why it didn’t happen is I kind of was the one that was, like, ‘I don’t think I wanna pursue this. I don’t wanna do this without him.’ … Looking on the outside of the band. I’m a fan of that. I’m not trying to change that. Never was.”
In a July 2024 interview with the “Broken Record” podcast, Tankian was asked if he would be okay with SYSTEM OF A DOWN going on without him, with a different singer in his place, Serj said: “Absolutely. I’ve offered them that opportunity and been very supportive of it many years. If they wanted to do that, if they wanted to continue in a way that I didn’t — for example, if they wanted to tour a lot and I just wanna do a couple of shows here and there, because I’m not into touring a lot, to be fair to them, if they wanted to do that, I’m totally open to it still. I’m not sure they want to do that. They haven’t until now, and I think it would take something away from the prestige and legacy of the band itself, but as friends and as someone who cares very much about my partners, I would be okay with it.”
Regarding what it is about the four members of SYSTEM OF A DOWN as individuals, the alchemy of them together, that makes the band so great as a unit, Serj said: “Everything that each person is — from their personality to their playing style to how they think, how they feel and the combination thereof — make SYSTEM OF A DOWN what it is. If you take any particle away from this compound, it’s not going to be SYSTEM OF A DOWN. It could be called SYSTEM OF A DOWN, but it’s not going to really be SYSTEM OF A DOWN. Even the stubbornness and the creative differences, everything, the push and pull, the manicness, the calmness, all of the above is what makes who we are.”
In June 2024, Serj was asked by Metal Hammer magazine about comments from his Dolmayan in 2023 in which the drummer claimed that Serj “hasn’t wanted to be in the band for a long time.” Serj said: “John means the world to me. He’s my brother-in-law, I love him, and I saw him just yesterday, but there are times he’s got mad and said fucking shit. And look, there’s times I’ve gotten mad and said fucking shit, too. The option has always been there for the band to move on without me, and John knows that.
“In the end, to me SYSTEM OF A DOWN is beyond the band,” he continued. “It’s our relationship together. And it means more to me than the band itself, or even the music itself. And that is hard for other people, maybe even other people in the band, to understand. But, as I saw from the stage at Sick New World [festival in Las Vegas in 2023], the multi-generational appeal of the music we have made is mind-blowing, bro. Our music is more timeless than we ever imagined, and that is the hugest compliment for any artist.”
SYSTEM OF A DOWN has toured intermittently since ending its hiatus in 2011, but has only managed to record two songs in the last 20 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 previously addressed how his relationship with Malakian has evolved over the years, particularly as it relates to their collaborative partnership, in May 2024 in an interview with Tom Power, host of “Q” on Canada’s CBC Radio One. 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.”
Asked why he wanted to write about this in his book, Serj said: “A lot of it has been publicized in a very sensationalist format by media, music media mostly, and I kind of wanted to put it in a proper perspective and grounding perspective, but with love and with balance and understanding that these things happen. This is normal. You have a relationship and you have differences in opinion as [to] how you wanna go forward, whether it’s a band or a marriage or whatever it is. And these things happen. And so I wanted to take that aspect out, I wanted to take the sensationalist aspect out of the whole thing and be, like, this is not only what happened, but this is how I see things.”
Last year, SYSTEM OF A DOWN announced a run of 2025 North American shows that will kick off at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on August 27-28 with special guests KORN, as well as two nights 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.
This past spring, SYSTEM OF A DOWN completed a nine-show “Wake Up!” South American stadium tour. The trek kicked 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 moved on to Chile, Argentina and Brazil, wrapping up with a run of five shows in Curitiba, Rio De Janieiro and São Paulo. The concerts were SOAD‘s first trip to South America since 2015.
“Down With The System” was released in May 2024 via Hachette Books.
