‘Hypnotize’ album artwork. (Sony Music Entertainment/American Recordings)
If you’re just sitting in your car and waiting for a new System of a Down album, you’ve officially been waiting for two decades.
Hypnotize, the fifth and, as it stands now, final studio effort from the “Chop Suey!” metallers, was released on Nov. 22, 2005 — 20 years ago Saturday. System announced a hiatus a year later before returning in 2010, though new music didn’t materialize.
In 2018, frontman Serj Tankian issued a statement explaining the creative stalemate between the band members that has kept them from putting together another album, citing a desire for more equal creative input and publishing splits, among other factors.
In 2020, System finally released new music in the form of two singles raising awareness and funds for the members’ ancestral homeland of Armenia, which was at war with Azerbaijan at the time. Still, no album came.
If Hypnotize remains the last-ever System album, guitarist Daron Malakian tells ABC Audio he’s proud of what the band accomplished with its discography.
“We stopped making records after [Hypnotize], but within five albums, I think you listen to System of a Down, and you hear an evolution,” Malakian says.
“The first album [was] very raw, very heavy,” he continues. “Second album, heavy, but now we have all these textures and vocal harmonies. And so, you hear the band moving, not putting out the same thing, same thing. I didn’t write ‘Chop Suey!’ seven times because it was a hit.”
Even if they haven’t put out an album in 20 years, System of a Down remains a huge live act. Over the summer, they played giant shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Chicago’s Soldier Field and Rogers Stadium in Toronto.
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