Serj Tankian Talks System of a Down’s Potential Touring Future

Serj Tankian opened up on System of a Down’s potential touring future in a new interview.

System have only played two shows in the last two years, both of which were at Las Vegas’ Sick New World festival. Prior to that, they performed a handful of times in early 2022, but haven’t been on an actual tour in quite a while.

In a new interview with LiveSigning about his new book Down With the System, Tankian admitted that while touring lost its charm for a while, he may be open to doing something similar — but less taxing — in the future.

“I love performing, but… I think when you do a long tour, it’s not just physically exhausting, but it’s artistically redundant after a while, repeating the same thing. That’s why we’re really enjoying doing these one-offs, they’re special events, special occasions. We can’t do them everywhere, we can’t do them all the time,” the singer explained.

“But performing becomes fun again, in a way, and I had kind of lost that.”

Tankian added that his back issues also prohibited him from touring, but he’s been feeling a lot better and getting more exercise in to stay in shape.

“As far as touring somewhere in the near future, possibly, I would say. I mean, I’m open to looking at stuff, but not thrilled about doing long tours at all, anywhere. Just one-offs, or maybe a handful of one-offs with dates in between,” he concluded.

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See the full interview below.

Serj Tankian Opens Up on System of a Down’s Potential Touring Future

Back in November, Tankian said that touring was low on his priority list, and that he preferred doing one-off performances here and there because it makes them feel more special.

Thus, he suggested that this year’s Sick New World festival would likely be System’s only show of 2024 — but now we know that’s not the case. The band has one more show scheduled for this year at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with Deftones in August.