System of a Down’s Shavo Odadjian: ‘We’ll Never Break Up’
System of a Down announced their hiatus in 2006, eventually returning once again as a cohesive unit in late 2010. However, bassist Shavo Odadjian recently revealed that he never considered System of a Down to have been broken up, despite what many fans perceived about the band’s five-year halt. Furthermore, Shavo has gone even further to reassure fans, stating that he believes the band will “never break up.”
During System of a Down’s off years, many interpretations of the hiatus were conceived by fans. Many fans believed that various System members were no longer on speaking terms as various side projects began to spring up. Some System fans even lost hope of the band ever playing together again. However, during an interview with Boulevard Brutal, Shavo Odadjian chose to correct fan misinterpretations while responding to a question about how the System of a Down “reunion” came to be:
Well, it was not really a reunion. We never said we were broken up; we were on a hiatus. We shouldn’t have even said anything [about taking a break]. There’s a lot of bands that don’t release an album every year. There’s a lot of bands that take three, four or five years off here and there, but they don’t say ‘hiatus,’ so no one really notices it. They just anticipate the next record. Well, we just mentioned it, we said it, so it seemed like a breakup, but it really wasn’t. It was just that we wanted to do something different for awhile and then come back and hang out again and be friends again. And that’s all it was, really. There’s a lot of misconception. That’s why I get tired of the ‘come-back-together’ Twitters I get and messages I get. Because we are together. Like, enough with it. We’re just not making an album right now — that’s all. That doesn’t mean we’re broken up. Just because we’re making other albums with other people doesn’t mean that we’re broken up.
We’ve been a band since 1993. I don’t think we’re ever gonna be broken up. [laughs] Whatever happens, we’re always gonna be together. We can go [for five years without doing anything with the band] and then come back and play shows and maybe make a record, maybe not — who knows? Maybe make ten records. Maybe tour for five years. I don’t know. I’m just saying we’re just good friends that are in a band together, and we’ve grown to a level where we now wanna do whatever we wanna do. And I hope everybody understands that. But we’ll never break up. . . I’m one of the most, like, ‘wanting-to-tour’ guys in the band. Actually, the three of us [Shavo, guitarist Daron Malakian and drummer John Dolmayan] really wanna tour a lot more and do a lot more. [But] Serj [Tankian, vocals] has got a lot on his plate right now, which is cool.
System of a Down have been sporadically touring since summer 2011 while continuing their other creative projects. System recently announced a batch of North American tour dates with Deftones during the month of August.