You seem more worried about it than me, thanks for looking out.

I got you, dude. I'll make sure you never diss yourself again.

there new songs were meh to me same ol same ol

Daron Malakian strikes me as the Lars of this band with no real Hetfield element to work as a counter-force. My very uninformed opinion as that Serj stopped being into the band, and Daron is just out there like "I've got this great idea!" and it's why the last two albums were sucktastic and bland.

Malakian was always the primary songwriter, he just grew more comfortable with his annoying vox over time.

Yeah, that's certainly true. But I also think the confidence meant more pushback against bad criticism. That's obviously a guess, I'm not in the studio with them, but anytime you see a solo project suck hard, it's almost always because studio musicians are getting paid, and no one cares enough to go "I don't know man, that sounds like a bad idea."

Edit: Also, my opinion on these two new songs are they'd be filler on the first two albums at best.

Obviously a guess fosho

Excellent contribution.