Ever since System Of A Down reunited after a four-year hiatus in 2010, the question on everyone’s lips has been about when the group are releasing a new album. While the idea of a new record isn’t dead in the water yet, the group’s guitarist has revealed that the band aren’t making albums at the current time.

Last month, it was announced that System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian has revived his solo project Scars On Broadway, a project which blossomed as SOAD entered its 2006 hiatus. Of course, with the group entering a new stage of its existence, Malakian has found himself speaking about his wide variety of musical projects.

Speaking to Kerrang! recently, the guitarist explained that he finds himself writing music for a number of his different projects, regardless of whether he has an outlet for it to be released at the current time, and confirmed that System Of A Down aren’t working on any new music right now.

“I don’t really write for people, and if no one heard what I wrote, I would still write songs,” Malakian explained. “It’s just what I do. If I’m not writing I feel like I’m not doing what I’m here to do. So I have a lot of music that’s still to be released in the future, whether it’s with System or Scars. I have a lot of material.”

“I think the Scars stuff tends to take more of a rock direction, even though I would say there’s a lot of material on [the upcoming Scars On Broadway] album that I think has more of a System of a Down flavor in it than maybe the first Scars album did.”

“As of right now, System’s not making albums, so this is the project through which I’m releasing my songs.”

Of course, the topic of a new System Of A Down album has been rather contentious for some time. Back in December, frontman Serj Tankian seemed to indicate that any of his future projects will be wholly instrumental, explaining that he’s “tired” of writing lyrics and that he “wrote so many lyrics that it stopped to be interesting.”

Tankian later confirmed that the band do indeed have new music, but they can’t seem to reach a consensus on how they should move forward as a group.

“We’ve discussed it and we’ve played each other songs, but we still haven’t come eye to eye on how things should be done for us to be able to move forward with it. That’s where it’s been,” he explained to Rolling Stone in December.

“When people don’t see a record, they assume the worst about your internal relationship. But the truth is we’re actually better friends—at least I’m better friends with everyone than I’ve ever been.”

However, despite these rather negative-sounding updates, Malakian seems to remain the most optimistic of the band’s members, stating last month that the band have in no way abandoned the idea of recording a new album.

“No, it’s not abandoned. But as of right now, not everyone is on the same page,” he explained to Rolling Stone. “Trust me, man, I’m probably the biggest System of a Down fan in the world. I mean, I named the band [laughs]. So I’d like to see something like that happen.”

“But we’re all friends. We all still go out. We play the songs live. We enjoy it. But doing an album is a totally different thing than playing the songs we already have live,” he continued. “It takes a little bit more togetherness, a little bit more commitment from everybody, and I’m not sure everybody is ready to commit to that right now. And it is what it is, man. I can’t force anybody to do anything they don’t want to.”

So while we’re all still hanging out for that new record (to put it in perspective, even Tool have released an album since System Of A Down’s Hypnotize was released in 2005), you can rest assured knowing that despite there being no action on that front right now, the band have in no way given up on giving fans new music sometime in the future.

Check out System Of A Down’s ‘Toxicity’:

The article was originally published on Tone Deaf