Earlier today (April 23rd), System of a Down guitarist/vocalist Daron Malakian unleashed a new song "Lives," the lead single off Dictator, the long-delayed second album from his solo project Scars on Broadway. Malakian teased the new LP as recently as 2012, but the record was never released; it's finally due July 20th.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Malakian reveals that his lack of clarity about what was going on in System of a Down led him to sit on the album, for which he recorded every instrument and all the vocals. "I recorded the album and then around that time System started playing live again," he says. "So every time we'd play live, there'd be conversations like, 'Maybe we'll do an album.' So being the guy who wrote the majority of almost all the System songs in the past, I was like, 'All right, let me see what's happening with it. Let me hold onto these songs and let me see how this develops.' We talked about it and we weren't all on the same page. Not everybody was into the idea ... Not knowing what's happening with System has kept me from putting my own stuff out."
That said, now that it's finally set to come out, the new Scars on Broadway album should please fans of both his bands, according to Malakian. It "has more of a System flavor to it than the first Scars on Broadway did," he says of Dictator, noting specifically that there are "more of the metal tones going on there."
As for a new SOAD record, the guitarist says the idea hasn't been abandoned, but that the band also hasn't made much concrete progress on one. "It really comes down to where each person is in his life and not everybody is ready to commit the same way I might be," he explains, adding, "Trust me, man, I'm probably the biggest System of a Down fan in the world. I mean, I named the band ... So I'd like to see something like that happen."
