During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Shavo Odadjian talked about the new System of a Down tour.
SOAD recently announced extra shows added to their huge stadium events this year. “We haven’t played a lot together for a while. We’ve been doing one or two shows a year since 2017,” the bassist replied when asked why the band is only playing in three cities. “So, the relationships were not as great as they are now. It’s just everybody wasn’t on the same page.”
He went on to say, “We’ve been talking. Everything’s great, knock on wood. Everyone’s happy. So we decided to test the waters and play some shows. And that’s what it is. There is no strategy to it, there’s no plan to do the rest of the world just yet. I’m not saying it’s not gonna happen; I’m not saying it is gonna happen.”
“We told each other, ‘Let’s play it by ear, do these shows, see how we feel afterwards. If we don’t wanna do any more, we don’t do any more. If we wanna do more, we’ll do more.’ There’s no heavy responsibility on anyone, because I feel like a lot of it is just thinking too much, overthinking what could happen,” Odadjian further shared about their future plans.
Shavo explained how some members of the band had difficult experiences in the past, “Bad experiences have happened to certain people, and they kind of hold that as PTSD, I think. And now that things are better, we’re older, we’re, like, ‘Dude, no pressure, bro. Let’s just do it. If we like it, we do. If we don’t like it, we [don’t].’ ‘Cause you know what? Serj [Tankian, System of a Down vocalist] had a great time at Sick New World [festival in Las Vegas] last year.”
“We had such an amazing, fun show and everyone left the stage hugging. And so he called back, he’s, like, ‘Dude, I loved it. Let’s do more of these.’ So that’s where that happened. We’re, like, ‘Let’s go,'” he further said of their appearance at Sick New World.
Odadjian concluded, “As long as everyone is down. Daron [Malakian, System of a Down guitarist] was down. So we decided, ‘Let’s test the waters. Let’s not just go full blast and start doing months. Let’s just test the waters with three shows.’ Those three shows turned to six.”
SOAD went on hiatus in 2006, then reunited in 2011 for festivals and occasional shows. Their latest albums ‘Mezmerize’ and ‘Hypnotize’ arrived in 2005. The group will also tour South America this spring with seven stadium shows. The ‘Wake Up! South America’ tour starts April 24 in Bogota, Colombia.
