Serj Tankian, known best as frontman of System of Down, has unleashed his latest single, “Kneeling Away From The Sun.” The track is the most recent release in his weekly single drops for Covers, Collaborations & Collages, the artist’s upcoming album. This week’s release features American artist D.S. Bradford – who has been providing the covers for every single release thus far – contributing on guitar. The track can be found on Tankian’s YouTube channel.
After dabbling in the electronic, the emotional and even touch of jazz, Tankian’s latest release is the first to finally incorporate hints of the metal he’s most known for. That said, “Kneeling Away From The Sun” still blends much of the unique flavorings the project has had thus far, including here some dashes of synths and more symphonic elements as well as Tankian himself incorporating the more poem-like vocal structure that has colored this project thus far. Bradford provides some solid guitar work on the track to help create an intense and catchy instrumental. What it results in is a rock and pop-styled track that feels just that touch closer to System of a Down and Tankian’s past metal singles, yet one that still feels distinct to Tankian’s more diverse sorts of output that this project has already put on display.
Tankian provides backstory to the track as per usual, via posts on YouTube and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He explains that parts of the song came from planned collaboration with the late acclaimed Swedish DJ Avicii. After a call from the producer, the two met in Hollywood with plans to collaborate, Tankian saying they had a great time. With time, however, Avicii’s career took off and the two became too busy to collaborate, until the unfortunate passing of the artist. Tankian pays respects, calling him a “sweet soul.” Tankian took the aspects of the track he had written, which he cared much about, to create the new single partially out of respect to his departed colleague.
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