SYSTEM OF A DOWN Guitarist Talks New SCARS ON BROADWAY Album

SYSTEM OF A DOWN guitarist Daron Malakian spoke to Revolver magazine about the recording process for the second album from his SCARS ON BROADWAY project, which began earlier this year at a Los Angeles studio.

In October 2008, Malakian announced via SCARS ON BROADWAY's web site that the band's headlining tour — which included an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" — was being canceled, with no plans of rescheduling. Malakian cited his lack of enthusiasm and "his heart not being into touring" as the chief reasons behind the decision to call off the trek.

According to the guitarist, a number of factors contributed to his pulling back. "The main one was that after SYSTEM split up, I think it was almost too soon for me to jump back into something," he says. "But I kind of felt like I had to. And then there were some things going on in my personal life that made it impossible for me to be on the road. So for two or three years, I was basically just chilling."

The upcoming CD, on which Malakian sings and plays all the instruments, including, for the first time, drums, will feature such tracks as "Dictator", "Till The End" and "Fuck N Kill".

Of the record's themes, Malakian says, "The songs are never just about one thing. They're usually about five different things." Take, he says, "Fuck N Kill": "It's about a few emotions that blend together and make a person maybe want to do both-maybe at the same time, or one after the other, who knows? Like, you watch television and you see on the news that there's a war going on, but the girl that's explaining it to you is fucking gorgeous. How does your brain take that? Or there's a line that says, 'Let's take drugs and go to war. You have these soldiers that come home from combat with PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] and we just give them pills and send them back out. So there are a lot of different ideas going on."

The new lineup of SCARS ON BROADWAY made its live debut on September 22 at the Epicenter festival at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, California.

Fan-filmed video footage of the performance — which included the first-ever airing of four new songs — can be seen below.

SCARS ON BROADWAY 2012 is:

* Daron Malakian - Lead Vocals, Lead Guitar
* Danny Shamoun - Keyboards, Percussion
* Dominic Cifarelli - Bass Guitar
* Jules Pampena - Drums, Percussion

SCARS ON BROADWAY's lineup previously included SYSTEM OF A DOWN drummer John Dolmayan.

SCARS ON BROADWAY sold just under 24,000 copies of its self-titled debut album in the United States during its first week of release to debut at position No. 17 on The Billboard 200 chart. This number represented roughly 36 percent of the 66,000 opening tally registered by "Elect the Dead", the debut solo effort from SYSTEM OF A DOWN lead singer Serj Tankian, which came out in the fall of 2007 through the Warner Music Group.