“I have a hundred riffs waiting, if they need anything for me” – Shavo Odadjian does not exclude new System Of A Down music

Shavo Odadjian discussed the prospect of System Of A Down releasing a follow-up to its 2005 albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” in a recent interview with Chuck Armstrong of Loudwire Nights. Since coming out of hiatus in 2011, the group led by Serj Tankian has gone on sporadic tours but hasn’t released a new album. Shavo, a 50-year-old American-Armenian who was born Shavarsh Odadjian, made this statement.

Listen, bro, my door is always open with that. I have a hundred riffs waiting, if they need anything for me. The way it would work was Daron would come in and he’d have complete songs, which I fucking respect, man. The dude’s a fucking sick-ass songwriter. And then Serj would have songs he’d bring in complete. It would just be Serj’s were a little different than what the mold of System became. So we would use some of it, but not all of it. And I feel like that’s where the disconnect happened. It wasn’t like someone fucking cursed anybody. It wasn’t like someone banged anyone’s girl or cussed out… Nothing happened that you can’t be cool with. We’re still cool with each other. We walk on stage. We love each other. So there’s always gonna be that. I wanna always play shows with them. And you never know, bro. I’m always gonna leave that door open. It shouldn’t be shut. It’s a fucking shame that new music not happening, because we can do so much. Look, we went in, we did two songs four years ago. How they sound, man. I mean, that could be an album of that shit. And we can even write crazier songs. That was quick. Daron brought a few of those in — boom, boom, boom — and the song was done; it was, like, two days. Imagine if it was going in and writing actual music and caring about the album. ‘Cause we compose albums. We’re not, like, songwriters. We’re songwriters that make albums. It’s all about the composition of the album.

In June the same question was asked to lead singer Serj Tankian.

Egalitarian approach to everything within the band. [In other words] kind of more equality in terms of sourcing of the music, in terms of splitting everything, including publishing, in terms of ideas, in terms of sharing the vision — that kind of stuff. It’s in the book. We call it a manifesto jokingly because I wrote points down that, years ago when I had some new songs that I thought would be amazing with System, and so I played it for the guys. And I said, ‘Guys, I’ve got an idea of a vision, a different way forward that I think would be very beneficial for the band.’ And I presented it — we call it a manifesto in the book almost half jokingly, but bringing a manifesto to rock musicians is… I guess it doesn’t work — it doesn’t work. But I was trying to instill the same type of egalitarian principles as I love as an activist within whatever I do. And at that time, it didn’t work, but maybe it will one day. We’ll see.