System Of A Down Are “Testing The Waters” With Their Beefed Up 2025 Touring Schedule

For the majority of their career, multi-platinum Armenian-American nü-metallers System Of A Down have operated with a pervading level of dysfunction. 30 plus years into their career, the acclaimed outfit have largely spent at least the past decade and change existing as a legacy act.

Outside of two new songs that arrived for charity in 2020, the band’s last substantial offering of new music arrived back in 2005. Since then, a longstanding impasse involving disputes over both creative and financial aspects of the band has kept them out of the studio.

Likewise, the band’s touring schedule also receded, in part because of vocalist Serj Tankian‘s own self-professed disinterest in being on the road for weeks at a time, but also due to issues with his back.

In 2021, Tankian underwent surgery for that condition and it would appear that time headlining the first two ‘Sick New World‘ festivals since may have at least rekindled some of his passion for playing more than just a single show or two a year.

After several years of one-off destination festivals, System Of A Down are bucking their much maligned status quo in 2025. Last December, the band rolled out a comparatively extensive run of both North And South America, representing their largest stint on the road in one year since 2017.

In a newly conducted interview with SiriusXM‘s ‘Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk‘, the group’s bassist Shavo Odadjian admitted that beefed up schedule is as he put it, the band ‘testing the waters’, of how to operate going forward.

Speaking of the reaction to the announcement of the first three dates for North American leg, which promptly sold out, Odadjian stated:

“Literally within a few hours we sold out every show, and it was a shock to us. But I’m very glad that the stadiums were available near those dates. We had a band conference that it sold out. My manager hit us up. He’s, like, ‘Dude, you guys sold it all out.’ … It floored me. People are, like, ‘Why should it be so surprising to you?’ Everyone sees us a certain way. I still see us as that band from Hollywood. I’m not seeing us as this giant band that could sell out MetLife twice, two nights in a row. Football stadiums, bro. So, we decided, ‘Let’s add another show to each.’ And we put it out there the next day and those sold out too.”

When questioned why the group are only hitting up three North American cities, he replied:

“We haven’t played a lot together for a while. We’ve been doing one or two shows a year since 2017. So, the relationships were not as great as they are now. It’s just everybody wasn’t on the same page. 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.”

He continued:

“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 had a great time at Sick New World 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.’ As long as everyone is down. Daron [Malakian, System Of A Down guitarist/vocalist] 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.”

Responding to why the group settled on three Eastern cities for that trek, he offered:

“We haven’t been there for a long time. ‘Cause we’ve been doing West Coast stuff a lot, because we haven’t been leaving the West Coast. Like I said, we’ve been kind of dipping our toe in the water, testing the temperature of the water. So, we’ve been kind of upsetting the East Coast. It seems like we don’t like going there, but we love the East Coast. We love all over. We love the entire country.

It’s not personal at all. So when we decided to do some extra shows, we said, ‘We need to go to the East Coast. That’s where this year has to be.’ So that’s the reason — because we the East; we really do. We talk about it every day — John [Dolmayan, System Of A Down drummer] and I talk about it every day. We’re, like, ‘We can’t wait for this.’ So we’re looking forward to seeing the crowd, being there and seeing the city and enjoying it with that eye again. We’re playing the city again. And to play two stadiums in each city is just — it’s a gift.”

After being asked if it’s challenging for the group to deliver stadium level shows with such little time spent together these days, he responded:

“We can do it. Look, for the last few years, we’ve been doing one or two shows. And we go and we rehearse two weeks for one show. I think that’s not smart. So six shows is better than one show to me. I’ll take it. I’ll take it, and I’m not gonna ask for more. I want it to happen organically. I think our band is that band — we can’t be told what to do. The more we push each other to do something, the less we do. So I figure the less we push, the more we’ll do. It should be done because we wanna do it, we love to do it, and that’s why we do it.”

System Of A Down‘s 2025 touring slate runs as follows:

04/24 Bogota, COL – Estadio Nemesio Camacho El Campin
04/27 Lima, PER – Estadio Nacional
04/30 Santiago, CHL – Parque Estadio Nacional
05/03 Buenos Aires, ARG – Estadio Velez Sarsfield
05/06 Curitiba, BRA – Estadio Couto Pereira
05/08 Rio de Janeiro, BRA – Estadion Nilton Santos
05/10 Sao Paulo, BRA – Allianz Parque
05/11 Sao Paulo, BRA – Allianz Parque

With Korn, Polyphia & Wisp:
08/27 New York City, NY – Metlife Stadium
08/28 New York City, NY – Metlife Stadium

With Avenged Sevenfold, Polyphia & Wisp:
08/31 Chicago, IL – Soldier Field
09/01 Chicago, IL – Soldier Field

With Deftones, Polyphia & Wisp:
09/03 Toronto, ON – Rogers Stadium
09/05 Toronto, ON – Rogers Stadium

[via Blabbermouth.net]