Serj Tankian doesn’t want to have a full-length tour with System of a Down.
“We’ve discussed playing shows and all of that. And I’ve been very clear I’m not a huge fan of consistent touring for many, many reasons,” the vocalist told Chuck Armstrong of Loudwire Nights. “And I won’t go into that now because I’ve talked about it before many times, but it’s almost like when we do play just single shows here and there, it makes it so fun, man.”
Tankian continued his words, “It’s the fun that was missing in touring for me, just having it be an event. It becomes special. And the funny thing is the value of the band in terms of touring has grown exponentially the less we’ve toured. There’s these bands touring like crazy and they’re not headlining and they [play] like 200 shows a year. And it’s, like, maybe you should stop for a little bit or whatever. I don’t know.”
“I mean, we’re not playing the game of supply and demand. We’re just doing what we, as human beings, [wanna do with] our own lives,” added the singer. “And it just turns out that way, the way that it turns out. Not everyone’s happy with the situation of not doing a lot of tours or not recording, obviously, within the band. But it is what it is. But there is something to be said about having things be an event rather than a constant.”
Tankian also has some conditions for making a new album with System of a Down. “Egalitarian approach to everything within the band,” the rocker told in The Jesea Lee Show in June. “[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.”
In recent years, System of a Down did fewer live shows. In 2023, they played just one show at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas. In 2024, they performed twice: at the Sick New World festival on April 27 and at a special concert with Deftones at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.