Latest news with #DaronMalakian
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
How to get System of a Down tour tickets: New Jersey, Chicago, and Toronto
System of a Down will be going on tour for the first time since their Wake Up the Souls world tour in 2015, so if you were worried you'd missed your chance to see the band live, now is your opportunity. This fall, their stadium tour will bring them to three cities across North America, with two concerts in each city, and I've broken down how to get System of a Down tickets below. The band featuring Serj Tankian (lead vocals, keyboards), Daron Malakian (guitar, vocals), Shavo Odadjian (bass, backing vocals), and John Dolmayan (drums) will start at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey August 27 and 28 before they travel to Chicago's Soldier Field for their concerts on August 21 and September 1. The tour will come to a close in Toronto at the Rogers Stadium for the shows on September 3 and 5. The Armenian-American heavy metal band was formed in Glendale, California, in 1994. Over 7 years between 1998 and 2005, the band released five total albums, and no additional albums have been released since the final two, Mezmerize and Hypnotize. The band went on hiatus a year later before getting back together in 2010. In November 2020, in response to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, System of a Down released their first songs in 15 years, "Protect the Land" and "Genocidal Humanoidz". If you're looking for how to get tickets to System of the Down's 2025 stadium tour, then we've got you covered. Here's our breakdown of the band's 2025 tour schedule, purchasing details, and price comparisons between resale and original tickets. You can also browse concert and ticket specifics at your convenience on StubHub and Vivid Seats. System of a Down's 2025 tour schedule System of a Down will be hitting three cities for two days each for their 2025 stadium tour. The tour starts in New Jersey for the August 26 and 27 shows, moves on to Chicago for August 31 and September 1, before concluding in Toronto for the September 3 and 5 concerts. August 27, 2025 New Jersey, NJ $111 $101 August 28, 2025 New Jersey, NJ $136 $119 August 31, 2025 Chicago, IL $188 $176 September 1, 2025 Chicago, IL $92 $84 September 3, 2025 Toronto, Canada $68 $83 September 5, 2025 Toronto, Canada $101 $119 Follow our WhatsApp channel and Instagram for more deals and buying guides. How to buy tickets for System of the Down's 2025 concert tour You can buy standard original tickets for System of the Down's 2025 stadium tour dates on Ticketmaster. However, due to the high demand, the number of remaining original tickets is limited. Tickets to System of the Down's 2025 tour can also be purchased through verified resale ticket vendors like StubHub and Vivid Seats. For tour dates with a more limited inventory of original tickets, you may find better luck with seating variety and availability on these sites. How much are tickets? Ticket prices for System of the Down's 2025 tour dates vary depending on the date, location, and demand for each show. On Ticketmaster, the cheapest available tickets range from $133 for the opener show in New Jersey on August 27 to $464 for the August 31 show in Chicago. As of writing, the full price breakdown for the cheapest original tickets on ticket master is as follows: Date City Ticketmaster prices August 27, 2025 New Jersey, NJ $133 August 28, 2025 New Jersey, NJ $469 August 31, 2025 Chicago, IL $464 September 1, 2025 Chicago, IL $138 September 3, 2025 Toronto, Canada CA$231 September 5, 2025 Toronto, Canada CA$243 The lowest-cost tickets to System of the Down's shows on StubHub range from $68 for the September 3 show in Toronto to $188 for the Chicago show on August 31. Vivid Seats has similar prices, with the least expensive tickets ranging from $83 to $176 for the same dates. Who is opening for System of a Down's tour? System of a Down will co-headline with different bands at each location and have an opener for all of the stadium tour's shows. The band will appear alongside Korn in New Jersey on August 27 and 28, Avenge Sevenfold in Chicago on August 21 and September 1, and finally Deftones in Toronto on September 3 and 5. Progressive rock band Polyphia will be opening for all six shows of the tour. Will there be international tour dates? Two of the six shows for the Stadium tour will be in Toronto at the Rogers Stadium on September 3 and 5. No additional international tour dates have been announced at this time.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
System of a Down's Daron Malakian strikes familiar, violent chords on new Scars on Broadway album
Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums "Mezmerize" and "Hypnotize" can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. "Addicted to the Violence," the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian's mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason. '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 home 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) during the last five years, using songs he'd written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, 'Satan Hussein,' which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System's second album, "Toxicity," was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release). With Scars, Malakian isn't chasing ghosts and he's not tied to a schedule. He's more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band's sporadically released three albums — 2008's self-titled debut, 2018's "Dictator," and "Addicted to the Violence"— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost 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 by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, "Addicted to the Violence" is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing. Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world? I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it's healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I'll cry or I'll get hyped up and excited. It's almost like I'm communicating with somebody, but I'm not talking to anyone. It's just me in this intimate moment. Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb? I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they're completely different than mine. I don't even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn't matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don't know my life. They don't know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don't know the personal struggles I've been through and they don't need to. Was there anything about "Addicted to the Violence" that you wanted to do differently than "Dictator"? Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that's a color I've never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn't have the same colors. Sometimes I'm like, "Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different." But I'm not afraid to use 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, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta. I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It's how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it. In 2020, System released the songs 'Protect the Land' and 'Genocidal Humanoidz,' which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway. At that time, I hadn't recorded 'Genocidal Humanoidz' yet, but I had finished 'Protect the Land,' and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it. Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse? Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, 'Hey, I got this song 'Protect the Land,' and it's about this exact topic.' So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System. You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative? At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me. You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018. That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn't ready to do a tour with Scars. Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup? I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety. A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out "Dictator"? I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. "Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?" I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while. System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow? I'm not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I'm getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it's best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that. The cover art for "Addicted to the Violence" — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you? My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he's never cared if anyone was looking at it. Do you seek his approval? No, I don't. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad's a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn't move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That's my alternative life. It's crazy. Have you been to Iraq? When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I'm a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, 'What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, 'Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?'' Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write 'Satan Hussein.' You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator? I don't hate the guy and I don't love the guy. I'm not on the right, I'm not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don't talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I'm not on a team. I don't like the division in this country, and I think if you're too far right or you're too far left, you end up in the same place. Is "Addicted to the Violence," and especially the song 'Killing Spree,' a commentary on political violence in our country? Not just political violence, it's all violence. 'Killing Spree' is ridiculous. It's heavy. It's dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I'm having fun with it. I'm not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it's from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like's it's funny. I don't want to say that's right or wrong, but from what I'm seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence. You're releasing "Addicted to the Violence" about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out 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 two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn't tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I'm fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. 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. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
System of a Down's Daron Malakian strikes familiar, violent chords on new Scars on Broadway album
Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums 'Mezmerize' and 'Hypnotize' can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. 'Addicted to the Violence,' the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian's mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason. '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 home 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) during the last five years, using songs he'd written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, 'Satan Hussein,' which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System's second album, 'Toxicity,' was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release). With Scars, Malakian isn't chasing ghosts and he's not tied to a schedule. He's more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band's sporadically released three albums — 2008's self-titled debut, 2018's 'Dictator,' and 'Addicted to the Violence'— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost 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 by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, 'Addicted to the Violence' is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing. Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world? I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it's healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I'll cry or I'll get hyped up and excited. It's almost like I'm communicating with somebody, but I'm not talking to anyone. It's just me in this intimate moment. Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb? I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they're completely different than mine. I don't even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn't matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don't know my life. They don't know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don't know the personal struggles I've been through and they don't need to. Was there anything about 'Addicted to the Violence' that you wanted to do differently than 'Dictator'? Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that's a color I've never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn't have the same colors. Sometimes I'm like, 'Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.' But I'm not afraid to use 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, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta. I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It's how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it. In 2020, System released the songs 'Protect the Land' and 'Genocidal Humanoidz,' which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway. At that time, I hadn't recorded 'Genocidal Humanoidz' yet, but I had finished 'Protect the Land,' and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it. Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse? Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, 'Hey, I got this song 'Protect the Land,' and it's about this exact topic.' So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System. You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative? At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me. You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018. That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn't ready to do a tour with Scars. Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup? I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety. A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out 'Dictator'? I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. 'Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?' I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while. System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow? I'm not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I'm getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it's best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that. The cover art for 'Addicted to the Violence' — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you? My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he's never cared if anyone was looking at it. Do you seek his approval? No, I don't. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad's a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn't move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That's my alternative life. It's crazy. Have you been to Iraq? When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I'm a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, 'What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, 'Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?'' Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write 'Satan Hussein.' You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator? I don't hate the guy and I don't love the guy. I'm not on the right, I'm not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don't talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I'm not on a team. I don't like the division in this country, and I think if you're too far right or you're too far left, you end up in the same place. Is 'Addicted to the Violence,' and especially the song 'Killing Spree,' a commentary on political violence in our country? Not just political violence, it's all violence. 'Killing Spree' is ridiculous. It's heavy. It's dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I'm having fun with it. I'm not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it's from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like's it's funny. I don't want to say that's right or wrong, but from what I'm seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence. You're releasing 'Addicted to the Violence' about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out 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 two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn't tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I'm fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. 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.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hear Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway's New Song, ‘Killing Spree'
Daron Malakian has strong opinions about what's missing in heavy music today: danger and risk. 'I think you have a generation of fans who are very easily offended,' he tells Rolling Stone. 'Offensiveness and shock should not be taken away from rock music in general.' Those qualities are inherent in 'Killing Spree,' the bloodthirsty first single off Addicted to the Violence, the new album from Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, due out July 18. 'Insanity/Controlling me,' he sings in the song's chorus, 'Society/The kids are on a killing spree.' Built on manic, strobing guitars and undulating waves of distortion, the music feels both cutting and brutalizing. 'It's gonna feel like a Jesus comin' back,' he sings, stretching the last word heavenward with giddy, helium-like aplomb. 'It's gonna feel like the devil's on the attack.' More from Rolling Stone Watch Julien Baker Join Jasmine.4.t to Cover System of a Down's 'Toxicity' System of a Down Jokingly Confirm Glenn Close Was a Bandmate Following Golden Globes Shout-Out Serj Tankian Asks If Imagine Dragons Would Play Nazi Germany Amid Azerbaijan Concert 'I think the song 'Killing Spree' is a subject that I don't think a lot of people want to touch,' Malakian, 49, says via email. 'I don't care, I'll touch it because it exists. It's not to be shocking or offensive, but it exists, and that's what I'll write about if I want to. I'm not going to edit myself if someone is going to be offended. I think that's missing in heavy metal music.' He's reluctant to explain the song — 'Your kids are on a killing spree, so your kids have something to do with it,' he says vaguely — partially because he doesn't see anything controversial about the subject matter of killing sprees. 'We live in a world, and things happen in this world, and killing sprees are one of those things that I've seen happen kind of often in the last 15 years or so — but I actually wrote the song way before that,' he says. Moreover, he looks at the song as commentary more than a transgressive statement. 'It's not for or against anything,' he says. 'It just is.' These days, Malakian says he just writes songs for the sake of it. As guitarist-singer for System of a Down, he's been keeping busy touring with them. Since that band has reached a creative stalemate, at least when it comes to making a new album (they did record a couple of songs a few years ago), he has been slowly working on a follow-up to the last Scars on Broadway album, Dictator, which came out in 2018. That album contained songs he had once hoped to record with System of a Down; Addicted to the Violence, he says, is more general. 'At this point in my life, I don't write any songs for System or for Scars,' he says. 'I just write songs. I think if System was making an album, some of those songs would probably end up on a System album, but System does not make albums these days, so they go to Scars.' Malakian had recorded Dictator as a distraction from 'some personal things going on with my family and my life,' so he recorded a bunch of songs in the space of two weeks, doing everything himself, from the vocals and guitars to the drums. Addicted to the Violence has been a more considered affair that found him collaborating on songwriting with his friend, multi-instrumentalist Orbel Babayan, drummer Roman Lomtadze, and saxophonist Matthew 'Narducci' Silberman. 'This album probably took me longer than any album I've ever made to decide it was done,' Malakian says. 'On this one, I did more home demos, recorded some stuff at home, picked the songs in my rolodex of songs that were like, 'Let's record this one, see how it goes.'' Scars on Broadway first recorded the songs at Malakian's home, but it didn't sound right, so they went to a studio, recutting everything but the vocals. He estimates it took close to two years to get everything the way he wanted it. 'I was in no rush,' he says. 'I'm never in any rush. I'm sure people who like what I do realize I don't put out an album every year. … That's just my process.' So will people be able to hear these songs in a concert setting? 'I have plans to play live, but I don't have any tours scheduled or anything like that,' he says. 'But I definitely have plans to play live.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
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Daron Malakian's Scars on Broadway Announce New Album, Unleash Single 'Killing Spree': Stream
The post Daron Malakian's Scars on Broadway Announce New Album, Unleash Single 'Killing Spree': Stream appeared first on Consequence. Scars on Broadway, the outfit fronted by System of a Down guitarist-singer Daron Malakian, have announced a new album titled Addicted to the Violence, their first studio LP in seven years. Ahead of its July 18th release, the band has unleashed the single 'Killing Spree.' Malakian composed, produced, and performed all the songs on the album, with contributions from Scars on Broadway bandmates Orbel Babayan (guitar) and Roman Lomtadze (drums). Get System of a Down Tickets Here Regarding the song 'Killing Spree,' Malakian said, 'It's a taboo topic people might be afraid to talk about. Kids have rebelled forever. Mental disorders have always been there too. In the last 15 years, we've seen a generation that will walk into school and kill other students. I'm not glamorizing or advocating it. I'm just saying, 'The kids are on a fucking killing spree.' It's what I see in front of me.' He added, 'I'm not just talking about killings either. You'll see a lady who's getting beaten up on the subway and people around her aren't even helping; they're fucking recording on their iPhones. We had automatic weapons fifty years ago, and nobody was doing this. I blame the mindset. We now have a generation that is so detached and desensitized. They're totally unemotional and unempathetic. There's no respect for life.' The July 18th release date for Addicted to the Violence happens to be Malakian's 50th birthday. The musician has been out on the road with System of a Down playing a series of South American shows. This summer, SOAD will perform two-night stands at stadiums in East Rutherford, New Jersey; Chicago, and Toronto, where they'll be joined by Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, and Deftones, respectively (pick up tickets here). 'I'm just as proud of Scars as I am of SOAD,' stated Malakian in a press release. 'This is another musical outlet for me. I think it's some of the best stuff I have to offer. I'm blessed that I can still do this and write songs every day.' Watch the video for Scars on Broadway's 'Killing Spree' and see the artwork (designed by Daron's father Vartan Malakian) and tracklist for Addicted to the Violence below. Pre-order the album at this location. Artwork: Tracklist: 01. Killing Spree 02. Satan Hussein 03. Done Me Wrong 04. The Shame Game 05. Destroy The Power 06. Your Lives Burn 07. Imposter 08. You Destroy You 09. Watch That Girl 10. Addicted To The Violence Popular Posts Sabrina Carpenter Announces New Single "Manchild" King of the Hill Revival Gets Hulu Release Date, New Opening Sequence Jack White Celebrates Trump and Elon Musk's Breakup: "More Popcorn Gruppenfuehrer!" Jonathan Joss, Voice of John Redcorn on King of the Hill, Shot and Killed by Neighbor T-Pain Announces 20th Anniversary US Tour King of the Hill Voice Actor Jonathan Joss Was Victim of Hate Crime, Husband Says Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
