Followers of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will at some point launch a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” can at the very least search some solace within the newest providing from band co-founder Daron Malakian. “Addicted to the Violence,” the third album from his solo venture Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, could lack System frontman Serj Tankian’s mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, however its eclectic construction, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally just like System of a Down — and with good cause.
“All of my songs can work for either Scars or System because they come from my style and have my signature,” Malakian says from his dwelling in Glendale. “When I wrote for System, I didn’t bring guitar riffs to the band. Like with [System’s 2002 breakthrough single] ‘Aerials.’ That was a complete song. I wrote it from beginning to end before I showed it to them.”
Malakian — who tackled vocals, guitar and bass — assembled “Addicted to the Violence” (out Friday) over the last 5 years, utilizing songs he’d written over roughly 20 years. The oldest monitor, “Satan Hussein,” which begins with a rapid-fire guitar line and includes a serrated verse and a storming refrain, dates to the early 2000s, when System’s second album, “Toxicity,” was rocketing towards six-times platinum standing (which it achieved 9 months after launch).
With Scars, Malakian isn’t chasing ghosts and he’s not tied to a schedule. He’s extra involved in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes priority over cohesion. Not one of the tracks on the band’s sporadically launched three albums — 2008’s self-titled debut, 2018’s “Dictator,” and “Addicted to the Violence”— comply with a linear or chronological path. As an alternative, every consists of an eclectic number of songs chosen virtually at random.
“It’s almost like I spin the wheel and wherever the arrow lands, that’s where I start,” he explains. “I end up with a bunch of songs from different periods in my life that come from different moods. It’s totally selfish. Everything starts as something I write for myself and play for myself. I never listen to something I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna love this.’ For me, a song is more like my new toy. At some point, I finish playing with it and I go, ‘OK, I’m ready to share this with other kids now.’”
Whether or not by happenstance or unconscious inspiration, “Addicted to the Violence” is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable occasions — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metallic, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean people, alt-country and psychedelia — generally inside the similar tune. Lyrically, Malakian addresses faculty shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, habit and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel browsing.
Is writing music your approach of creating sense out of a nonsensical world?
I like to think about it as bringing worlds collectively that, in different circumstances, could not belong collectively. However once they come out by way of me, they mutate and switch into this factor that is sensible. In that approach, music is like my therapist. Even when I write a tune and no person ever hears it, it’s wholesome for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. After I write a tune, generally it impacts me deeply and I’ll cry or I’ll get puffed up and excited. It’s virtually like I’m speaking with anyone, however I’m not speaking to anybody. It’s simply me on this intimate second.
Is it unusual to take these private, intimate and therapeutic moments and switch them into songs that exit for the plenty to interpret and take in?
I would like individuals to make up their very own meanings for the songs, even when they’re fully completely different than mine. I don’t even like to speak about what impressed the songs as a result of it doesn’t matter. Nobody must know what I used to be pondering as a result of they don’t know my life. They don’t know me. They know the man on stage, however they don’t know the private struggles I’ve been by way of and so they don’t have to.
Was there something about “Addicted to the Violence” that you simply wished to do otherwise than “Dictator”?
Totally different songs on the album have synthesizer and that’s a coloration I’ve by no means used earlier than in System or Scars. Each portray you make shouldn’t have the identical colours. Typically I’m like, “Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.” However I’m not afraid to make use of it.
[Warning: Video includes profanity.]
“Shame Game” has a psychedelic vibe that’s kinda like a hybrid of Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blue Oyster Cult, whereas the title monitor has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta.
I like all that stuff. I spend extra time listening to music than taking part in guitar. It’s how I apply music. I absorb these inspirations and all of it comes out later once I write with out me realizing it.
In 2020, System launched the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” which you initially deliberate to make use of for Scars on Broadway.
At the moment, I hadn’t recorded “Genocidal Humanoidz” but, however I had completed “Protect the Land,” and my vocals on the tune are the tracks I used to be going to make use of for my album. Serj simply got here in and sang his components over it.
Why did you provide these songs to System when each time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a inventive deadlock?
As a result of [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was happening in Artsakh at the moment between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we determined we would have liked to say one thing. All of us obtained on the telephone and I stated, “Hey, I got this song ‘Protect the Land,’ and it’s about this exact topic.” So, I pulled it off the Scars file and shared it with System.
You launched the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, virtually precisely two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you type Scars out of a necessity to remain inventive?
On the time, I knew that if I wished to maintain releasing music, I wanted a brand new outlet, so Scars was one thing that needed to occur or I might have simply been sitting round all these years and no person would have heard from me.
You performed just a few reveals with Scars earlier than your first album got here out in 2008, however you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and solely launched yet another Scars tune earlier than 2018.
That was a extremely unusual time. I wished to maneuver ahead with my music, however we had labored so arduous to get to the purpose we obtained to in System, and never everybody was in the identical boat when it got here to how we wished to maneuver ahead. I simply wasn’t able to do a tour with Scars.
Was it like making an attempt to start out a brand new relationship after a foul breakup?
I may need rushed into that second marriage too fast. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] taking part in with me, and I feel that was [a sign that] I used to be nonetheless holding onto System of a Down. That created plenty of nervousness.
A couple of years later, you introduced that you simply have been engaged on a brand new Scars album and deliberate to launch it in 2013. Why did it take till 2018 so that you can put out “Dictator”?
I used to be writing songs and pondering they have been wonderful, however in my head I used to be conflicted about the place the songs have been going to go. “Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?” I underwent this fixed battle as a result of Serj and I all the time had this inventive disagreement. I lastly moved previous that and did the second album, nevertheless it took some time.
“Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present,” Malakian stated.
(Travis Shinn)
System of a Down performed 9 live shows in South America this spring, and you’ve got six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any probability a brand new System album will comply with?
I’m not so certain I even need to make one other System of a Down file at this level in my life. I’m getting together with the fellows rather well proper now. Serj and I like one another and we get pleasure from being onstage collectively. So, possibly it’s greatest for us to maintain taking part in live shows as System and doing our personal issues outdoors of that.
The duvet artwork for “Addicted to the Violence” — a silhouette of a lady towards a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in entrance of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a serious inspiration for you?
My strategy to artwork and every little thing I find out about it comes from my dad, and the way in which we strategy what we do could be very related. We each do it for ourselves. He has by no means promoted himself or executed an artwork exhibition. The one issues most individuals have seen from him are the album covers. However ever since I used to be born, he was doing artwork in the home, and he’s by no means cared if anybody was taking a look at it.
Do you search his approval?
No, I don’t. He normally could be very supportive of what I do, however my dad’s a sophisticated man. I like him loads and need I may even be half of the artist that he’s. And if he and my mother didn’t transfer to this nation, I might not have been in System of a Down. I might have ended up as a soldier throughout Desert Storm and the Second Gulf Warfare. That’s my different life. It’s loopy.
Have you ever been to Iraq?
After I was 14 years outdated, I went there for 2 months to go to kin and it was an entire tradition shock. I’m a child that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad sporting a Metallica shirt and I used to be a complete good aleck. All over the place we went, I noticed footage and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and stated, “What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, ‘Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?’” Simply me saying that made him nervous and scared. Speaking like that was significantly harmful and I had no concept. That was a particular studying expertise of what I may have been. And it impressed me later to put in writing “Satan Hussein.”
You had a glimpse of life underneath an authoritarian regime. Do you will have robust emotions concerning the Trump administration and the way in which the president has, at occasions, acted like a dictator?
I don’t hate the man and I don’t love the man. I’m not on the proper, I’m not on the left. There are some issues either side try this I agree with, however I don’t discuss that stuff in interviews as a result of in terms of politics, I’m not on a group. I don’t just like the division on this nation, and I feel in the event you’re too far proper otherwise you’re too far left, you find yourself in the identical place.
Is “Addicted to the Violence,” and particularly the tune “Killing Spree,” a commentary on political violence in our nation?
Not simply political violence, it’s all violence. “Killing Spree” is ridiculous. It’s heavy. It’s darkish. However in the event you take heed to the way in which I sing, there may be a fully absurd supply, virtually like I’m having enjoyable with it. I’m not celebrating the violence, however the supply is completed the way in which a loopy particular person would have a good time it. So, it’s from the point of view of a killer, the point of view of a sufferer, and my very own viewpoint. I noticed a video on social media of those children standing round on the street, and one among them will get worn out by the again finish of a automotive and flies into the air. These children are recording it and a few of them are laughing like’s it’s humorous. I don’t need to say that’s proper or mistaken, however from what I’m seeing, lots of people have develop into desensitized to violence.
You’re releasing “Addicted to the Violence” about six weeks earlier than the ultimate six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you ever found out tips on how to compartmentalize what you do with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway?
There was a time that I couldn’t juggle the 2 very nicely, however now I really feel extra assured and really comfy with the place System and Scars are. I like taking part in with System, and I need to do extra reveals with Scars. I couldn’t inform you how both band will evolve. Solely time will inform what occurs and I’m superb with that so long as it occurs in a pure approach. The whole lot we’ve skilled has introduced us to the place we are actually. And now could be all we’ve obtained as a result of the previous is gone and the longer term isn’t right here but. So, a very powerful factor is the current.
