Post-System of a Down guitarist Daron Malakian releases first single for his new album
Daron Malakian has been a very patient man for the last six years. The System of a Down guitarist recorded an album during the band's break in the mid-2000s which he decided not to release. That is, until now.
"I gotta be honest, it's been hard," he says, speaking to Rolling Stone. "It's been hard being patient."
The musician is now releasing the songs from those recordings as a brand new LP under the name Scars on Broadway, a side band he founded during SOAD's hiatus. The album, titled "Dictator", is due to be released on 20th July with a promotional single called "Lives" which is already out.
Malakian isn't the first musician to reinvent himself after leaving a famous band. In fact, his story is quite similar to that of Dave Grohl, the former Nirvana drummer who launched the band Foo Fighters after Nirvana was forced to disband due to Kurt Cobain's untimely death. Grohl recorded the songs for the first Foo Fighters album while he was still a member of Nirvana. Since Cobain's death, Grohl has gone on to become one of the greatest rockstars of our time with the Foo Fighters winning no less than 26 awards over the course of the last 24 years.
"Lives" commemorates the horrific Armenian Genocide and celebrates the sacrifices of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule.
"I'm Armenian, so I wanted to do something for Armenian people – especially since April 24th is the day we remember the genocide," he says. "It's about being proud that people did survive the genocide, and it's not just for Armenian people. It could be for anybody whose people have suffered that type of thing, such as Native Americans."
Malakian also revealed that half of the proceeds from the song's iTunes sales will go towards providing aid to Artsakh, a republic on the border between Azerbaijan and Iran that has a high Armenian population. The tiny republic has been engaged in an ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan since 1988 and is widely unrecognized by world governments. The operatic single might well mark the beginning of a new chapter in Malakian's career.
Check out the official video for "Lives" here: