Perhaps more than any other successful metal band in recent decades, System Of A Down are built on tension. That push and pull, mainly between frontman Serj Tankian and guitarist Daron Malakian, is at the heart of both what makes the Californian quartet so great and why they hardly make any music together anymore, the band’s last album releases coming with the Mezmerise and Hypnotize double-whammy in 2005.
There have been live reunions along the way, but, despite trying, any attempts to make a new full-length have been long abandoned. Tankian doesn’t let the intra-band conflict get in the way of their achievements, though, once telling Metal Hammer’s Dave Everley that their creative disputes have never overshadowed the music. “Show me a band that doesn’t have drama, and I’ll show you a shitty band,” he said. “There’ll always be drama – we’re four individuals who feel different about different things. But the press has played it up, and it’s kept the band in the limelight irrespective of our lack of making a record for 14 or 15 years.”
