Serj Tankian shares 'new' single A.F. Day, originally written for System Of A Down

Serj Tankian has shared a new solo single, A.F. Day, a song originally written for, but never released by, System Of A Down.

The song bears a strong Faith No More influence, and is described by Tankian as, “dystopian in mood.” It's the first song to be released from the singer's forthcoming EP, Foundations, which is set to emerge in September on Gibson Records, founded by his friend Cesar Gueikian, CEO of Gibson.

Talking about the song, Tankian says, “This is a song I wrote in the early days of SOAD that I never released. The majority of the instrumentation and vocals are recordings from that time. Dystopian in mood, it’s a reflection of the angst and anti-authoritarian attitude I had to conformity.”

Listen to A.F. Day below:

Speaking to Metal Hammer while promoting his new autobiography Down With The System, the singer explained that the origins of the Foundations EP lay in the deep dive he took into his formative musical years while writing what he calls his "accidentally hatched philosophical memoir."

"It's five songs," he revealed. "The reason I'm putting it out is that archival nature of writing a book made me look into songs from different periods of time. So one of the songs is from early System days, for example, that I've never put out, that I'd never worked with System on. A couple of the songs are from my early 2007 /2008 solo record period, but didn't fit the record [Elect The Dead, released in October 2007].

"It's an interesting retrospective of rock music that I've never released from different times, and it's called Foundations basically because it's the founding of my musical life. They're very interesting songs, very different from each other: one is really heavy, one is like, really progressive, there's just different elements to each of them. But I think they work in tandem."

In his memoir, Tankian reveals that he told System Of A Down that they should carry on without him as far back as 2017, and that the band did try out one possible replacement for the singer, but ultimately opted against moving forward without Tankian.

SOAD will play their second show of 2024 when they co-headline a one-off event with Deftones at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, on August 17.