System Of A Down -rumpali latoo suoraa tekstiä Serj Tankianista: Harmittelee ettei tätä korvattu jo vuonna 2006
Yhdysvaltalaisen metallijätti System Of A Downin edellisestä albumista on ehtinyt vierähtää jo lähes 18 vuotta ja vaikka yhtye onnistui vuonna 2020 julkaisemaan hyväntekeväisyyden nimissä kaksi uutta kappaletta ”Protect The Land” sekä ”Genocidal Humanoidz” on bändi viimeisten vuosien aikana onnistunut aktivoitumaan vain suurelta osin satunnaisten keikkojen muodossa.
Rumpali John Dolmayan on nyt antanut Battleline Podcastille haastattelun jossa on todennut, että yhtyeen olisi pitänyt vaihtaa laulaja Serj Tankian pois jo vuonna 2006 julkaistujen ”Mezmerize” sekä ”Hypnotize” -albumeiden julkaisujen jälkeen koska tämä ei ole ollut kovinkaan innokas olemaan enää bändissä heidän kanssaan ja sen vuoksi kaikki yhtyeen asiat junnaavat paikoillaan. Dolmayan lyttää samassa yhteydessä myös bändikaveriensa sivuprojektit todeten, että ei niistä yksikään nouse lähellekään System Of A Downin tasolle musiikillisesti koska heitä kaikkia neljää tarvitaan hyvän musiikin luomiseksi. Dolmayan kertoi Serj Tankianista sekä yhtyeen sivuprojekteista seuraavaa:
”Serj hasn’t really wanted to be in the band for a long time. And quite frankly, we probably should have parted ways around 2006. We tried to get together multiple times to make an album, but there were certain rules set in place that made it difficult to do so and maintain the integrity of what SYSTEM OF A DOWN stood for. So we couldn’t really come together and agree. And part of that is Serj’s fault, and part of that is my fault, and Shavo’s [Odadjian, SYSTEM OF A DOWN bassist] and Daron’s [Malakian, SYSTEM OF A DOWN guitarist] as well. But at the end of the day, if you have a majority of the band thinking one way and one person thinking the other, it’s very difficult to come together and make music thinking that person is important. And every member of this band is very important to the overall sound of the band. And you’ll know this by listening to anybody’s side projects; they’re never quite that good compared to SYSTEM. In fact, I think a lot of ’em aren’t very good at all. And when you compare that to what we do together as SYSTEM, you understand why the team matters and having certain talents come together and merge matter and that magic thing captured doing that matters.”
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”No matter what, Daron is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever seen in my life. What he does with SCARS will never be on the same level or league as SYSTEM. That doesn’t mean SCARS is bad; it just means it’s not SYSTEM. ’Cause at the end of the day, he doesn’t have me playing drums; he doesn’t have Shavo playing bass and bringing in certain riffs and adding to Daron’s music, and he doesn’t have Serj bringing his melody and lyrics into the play. So it’s all those things that make us SYSTEM.”
Kysyttäessä mitä Dolmayan tarkoitti sillä että bändin olisi pitänyt lähteä eri teille Serj Tankianin kanssa vuonna 2006 kertoi rumpali seuraavaa:
”I think we should have moved on, and if Serj didn’t wanna be in the band at that time, we should have just moved on and done it with somebody else. But that’s what happens when you’re loyal and you really wanna make it work; you’ll put up with things that may be detrimental to the health of the band or the health of the situation. Maybe it would have been better if we moved on and got another singer for an album or two and continued to make music and brought Serj back later if he wanted to come back. That probably would have been better. But as it is, I think we wasted 15, maybe 20 years of our lives waiting.”
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Dolmayan kertoo haastattelussa, että suurin osa bändistä haluaisi myös keikkailla paljon enemmän mutta Serj Tankiania ei keikkailu tunnu enää niin paljoa kiinnostavan ja tällä on nykyisin myös ongelmia selän kanssa. Dolmayan avasi aihetta seuraavasti:
”I think we would like to be working a lot more, but Serj also has a bad back now; he’s messed up his back somehow. And he just doesn’t wanna tour as much as the rest of us do. Look, if my wife told me that we were gonna have sex once a year, I’d be divorced. So you figure that out for what it is.
”I don’t think this is sustainable. The rest of us wanna work a lot more than he does. Now I don’t know if that means we’re just gonna break up and forget about it and call it a career or if we’re gonna move forward with somebody else or if Serj is gonna come around. Ultimately, the best-case scenario for me is Serj comes around and we can do, like, 15, 20 shows a year. Even that would be enough. We’d be able to go to places that we haven’t gone in a long time and play in front of fans that have never seen us play. That’s important to me.”
”I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Even talking about SYSTEM kind of bums me out, because I know what our potential is. And I know that if we make an album, it’ll be fantastic ’cause we have songs that have been ready for five [or] six years now; we just have to go in and record ’em. And I don’t know if that’s gonna happen or not.”
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