Theres no way to sugar coat it, System of a Down going on a hiatus sucked. The steady stream of albums they were releasing is now gone, and we currently have no news of when they might be linking up to record new material. The state of limbo fans are left in gets a little better when lead singer Serj Tankian releases his solo album Elect The Dead later this year.

While hardcore System Of A Down fans may be wanting or expecting a familiar sound on Serj Tankian's solo album, the frontman insists there will be a noticable difference on his project. "there's a lot more intimacy, because it's just me. Musically, I think tone-wise, there are a lot of instruments — there are layers of pianos and strings and weird synth stuff. There's a lot of guitars and lots of different affected guitars, heavy guitars — way too many guitar tracks. It's just a different vibe. There's maybe a song or two that may be reminiscent of some of the System stuff, but I think [this material] takes a lot of new directions."
Also, while Serj may be busy with his solo album, and running a record label, he insists that the group is not permanently disbanded, and could get back together whenever they chose to. "We're all doing our own things right now and just taking time off ," he said. "System's always been there. We've been a band for 11 years. We're five albums in, and we're all friends. So anytime we want to get together and work, it's there for us. Otherwise, we're doing our own things."
The decision to cut a solo record was an easy one because over the years Serj says he's always been writing and stockpiling material, not knowing what to do wih it, "I write music every day — for film, for video games, for whatever — and most of the songs I write, I don't know where they're going to end up, so I just keep on writing," he explained. "I like putting out different types of records. I like dabbling in many different things. But I had never done a full solo record. I had never written full songs for me to sing, where I play all the instruments and produce it myself. So I had all these songs that I felt really strong about, that I thought that I should be performing myself and not have them as songs for other people or for film or anything else. And that's [how] Elect the Dead came about. It's been a fun, liberating process for me."
The 11 track album will touch on a myriad of subjects, and will feature opera singer Ani Maldjian on three tracks. Waking the dead is slated for a fall release.
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