System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadijan announced he had a new project called North Kingsley in the works at the start of 2020, and now we have the first new material from the trio in the form of the track 'Like That?' to listen to below.


The band will be releasing three-song EPs every few months to give fans a steady flow of new material, with the first volume due to arrive on August 14.


Those expecting it to sound anything like System Of A Down will likely disappointed, as this project encapsulates more of an underground hip-hop vibe driven by subdued guitar and basslines - check it out:

 

North Kingsley is a three-piece featuring Shavo with bandmates Saro Paparian and Ray Hawthorne.

Odadijan says of the new project:

"We’re giving you songs you can marinade on, instead of 12 songs all at once. There’s going to be a clip for every song, something visually for you to vibe on. I directed videos for System, I do stage production visuals for the band so that’s important to me. Saro has an incredible eye for creating new things visually and I act almost how a producer would on that and we are going to drop merch with every release, so it’s more than just music.

“I’m known for playing metal but you can’t say it’s just metal - it has a lot of other influences in there. I did Achozen with RZA and that was straight hip-hop. North Kingsley is right in the middle. The kick and the hi-hats and the snare sounds punk. To me punk rock isn’t a style of music, it’s something you live. It’s a lifestyle and it means going against the grain and I heard that there, and we are putting it all together to create something exciting and new for today.”

Saro Paparian adds:

“Our sound is very LA. Ray and I were raised in those dirty clubs for years and you have Shavo who’s part of one of the biggest LA bands of this century. I want people to know that this came from LA, you can hear it in the griminess of both the rock and the beats. The three of us align across the spectrum and bring different things. It’s like these musical and cultural nodes that center and become North Kingsley.


We have specific creative identities, it’s like watching those three things clash and meld together like steel rods being sculpted by friction. I’m stirring this witch's brew with Ray’s lyrical intellect and Shavo’s exceptional songwriting talent. It’s in his DNA to know when a song feels right and I throw my flavor into that and that’s us.”