{"id":675718,"date":"2026-01-05T15:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/675718\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T15:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:58:10","slug":"ill-never-forget-it-it-still-brings-goosebumps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/675718\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ll never forget it. It still brings goosebumps"},"content":{"rendered":"

System Of A Down<\/a>\u2018s Daron Malakian<\/a> had looked back on filling in for James Hetfield at Metallica<\/a>\u2018s \u2018Summer Sanitarium\u2019 tour.<\/p>\n

Back in 2000, SOAD were yet to make their breakthrough with \u2018Toxicity\u2019, and joined the likes of\u00a0Korn, Kid Rock and Powerman 5000 as openers on Metallica\u2019s tour. However, in July of that year, frontman Hetfield was injured in a jet ski accident, and, rather than cancel any gigs, Metallica decided to continue on with the shows.<\/p>\n

Recalling the period on Rick Rubin\u2019s Tetragrammaton podcast (via Louder<\/a>), he said: \u201cI met Metallica on stage playing with them. I never met them before. We\u2019re the first band. Nobody knows us.<\/p>\n

\u201cJason Newsted was singing, and then they brought the guys from Korn on and they kind of played like this Cheech & Chong cover song or something. They didn\u2019t know what to do, because James wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalled turning to his guitar tech and imploring him to tell Metallica\u2019s tech he knew \u201ca lot of their shit\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext thing you know,\u201d he continued, \u201cmy tech goes and talks to their guitar tech and then my tech comes back to me. He\u2019s, like, \u2018All right, come with me. So, next thing you know, I go on the other side of the stage. I get handed a Les Paul. I think it was one of Kirk Hammett\u2019s Les Pauls. And they\u2019re, like, \u2018All right. Go.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou gotta understand,\u201d he told Rubin. \u201cOur band\u2019s not big yet. I\u2019m still a kid \u2013 I\u2019m 22 years old. I can\u2019t even believe that we\u2019re even allowed to open up for Metallica. So this is all new to me at this point of my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they put me out there, and I turn and I\u2019m, like, \u2018Hey.\u2019 It\u2019s Lars, it\u2019s Kirk, it\u2019s Jason Newsted. They\u2019re, like, \u2018What do you know?\u2019 I go, \u2018I don\u2019t know. \u2018Master Of Puppets\u201d Okay. Count it in.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m up there with Metallica playing Master Of Puppets in front of 60,000 people. And I\u2019m, like, \u2018Who\u2019s gonna sing?\u2019 I said, \u2018Fuck it. I\u2019ll go sing.\u2019 And I sang. You would think we were rehearsed it, but we didn\u2019t rehearse it. And I didn\u2019t even know it was gonna happen. And it happened. I\u2019m up there, and I\u2019m playing Metallica with Metallica, in front of an audience where I would\u2019ve been in the fucking cheap seats just three years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI got off stage. Next thing you know, they\u2019re coming to me. They\u2019re, like, \u2018Hey, James isn\u2019t gonna be able to play for a few nights. They want you to come and play with them.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then next thing you know, they\u2019re, like, \u2018Hey, get your shit from your bus, because you\u2019re flying on the private jet with us now.\u2019 Oh, man. I\u2019ll never forget it. Even though my band is where we\u2019re at right now, it still brings goosebumps that I had a chance to experience that at that point of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Last summer, NME sat down with Malakian to discuss Scars On Broadway<\/a>\u2019s new album \u2018Addicted To The Violence\u2019, as well as the hitting the road with System of a Down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like we\u2019ve reconnected as friends,\u201d he told us. \u201cThat\u2019s where we started, we were friends and sometimes somewhere down the line, you get fame and money. You get politics in the band and differences of opinion on which way the band should go, where you kind of get divided.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started, we all used to travel in one little RV together. And then we made enough money to where each of us had our own bus. So along the way, what happened was we ended up with our own lives, doing our own things, and we only came together on stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a very natural way, you start getting separated from one another \u2013 not because of bad blood but because of how things turn out as you get more successful and I can see that\u2019s what happened with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band ae set to hit the road again this year with a mammoth arena run across the UK and Europe in summer<\/a>\u00a0with support from\u00a0Queens Of The Stone Age<\/a>. They\u2019ll play\u00a0two nights at London\u2019s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium<\/a> in July, marking SOAD\u2019s first dates in the UK and Europe since 2017, when they headlined that year\u2019s Download Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Find any remaining tickets here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"System Of A Down\u2018s Daron Malakian had looked back on filling in for James Hetfield at Metallica\u2018s \u2018Summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,3981,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-675718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-metal","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}