SYSTEM MEMBERS BECOME SCARS ON THE SIDE
By Richard Cromelin
Daily Press
ars-0801aug01,0,3795286.story
Aug 1 2008
VA
While the former group takes an indefinite break, new band’s debut
album is released.
LOS ANGELES – "I don’t get it when people complain that baseball
games are too long," says Daron Malakian, watching the action from
a seat behind home plate at Dodger Stadium during one of the team’s
recent home games. "This is my favorite place in the world. I don’t
care how long it goes, I’ll be here to the end."
This most wholesome and mainstream of settings probably isn’t the place
you’d picture as Malakian’s chosen refuge, given the apocalyptic,
dissident, disillusioned, angry, irreligious scenarios that belch
from the self-titled debut album by his new band, Scars on Broadway.
"You’ve never seen the sky like this / You never want to die like
this," he sings in "Universe," a grand anthem that describes what
might be an environmental catastrophe. In the Bowie-tinged ballad
"3005," he watches from a spaceship as civilization and "resurrection
junkies" — his term for those addicted to religion — sink below the
surface. And what is it they say in the band’s single "They Say"? They
say "it’s all about to end."
"It’s what’s around me. It’s what I hear, it’s what I see, it’s what
I’m absorbing like a sponge," says Malakian, 33, eating a pregame hot
dog and garlic fries. "It’s the times we’re living in, and I think
as an artist I’m just trying to put my finger on that."
Not that he’s on a mission. In fact, when he writes — always alone
at home — it’s more like a mystery.
"I consider myself a medium to it all. There’s something there and
then there’s a song and then there’s me. A lot of times, I don’t feel
responsible for the songs myself. But that’s my job or my place in
life, to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by."
Malakian’s methods helped make his other band, System of a Down, one
of the most commercially successful and critically admired groups
in hard rock, and that audience is primed for "Scars on Broadway,"
which was released this week. Malakian isn’t the only System mainstay
in the group — he brought bandmate John Dolmayan in as co-leader
after a couple of other drummers didn’t work out.
Along with Metallica’s upcoming return, the Scars’ album figures to be
one of the hard-rock highlights of the second half of the year. "They
Say" registered 100,000 downloads when it went up free on iTunes,
and the group (rounded out by guitarist Franky Perez, keyboardist
Danny Shamoun and bassist Dominic Cifarelli) made a few buzz-building
appearances in the spring.
On stage, Malakian is an imposing figure, seemingly possessed and
almost demonic in his intensity. At the ballpark, though, he’s
small in stature and low-key in manner, just a bearded, black-clad
L.A. sports fan.
"All four members of System are very different in temperament, unique
personalities," says Dolmayan, 36, slipping into the bar for a break
during the fourth inning. "I’d say that me and Daron are the alpha
male types. I think he’s always been looked at as kind of a leader
among friends, and I’ve kind of experienced that. Actually, me and
him got along the worst. … We both have a lot of drive."
An only child, Malakian was born and spent his early childhood in
Hollywood in a family of Armenian heritage. They moved to Glendale,
where he and his friends at one point noticed swastika-like designs
engraved in some old lampposts near his high school — the scars on
Broadway that would later give his band its name.
He and flamboyant singer-songwriter Serj Tankian formed the front line
and creative core of System of a Down, which began in 1995 and whose
combination of aggressive power, musical eccentricity and political
outspokenness made it one of the most popular hard-rock bands of
this decade.
In 2006, the group announced that it would take an indefinite break,
and "Scars on Broadway" follows Tankian’s "Elect the Dead" as the
second album to come out during the hiatus — a term that seems all
right with everyone involved except Malakian.
"I see it as a separation," he says. "We’re separated but didn’t
get divorced, and there’s a door that’s open that someday we may get
together and play. But I’m headed down the Scars highway right now,
and that’s it. I don’t have any plans, and nobody, I think, has any
plans to recreate or do anything with System right now."
"Not bad" is the way he describes his relationship with Tankian. "We
don’t really see each other very much because we’re doing our own
things."
If System’s legacy has created high expectations for Malakian’s new
outlet, its shadow is adding to the pressure he admits he’s feeling.
"It’s starting over. People get very fixated on name brands, and System
became a name brand that people became a fan of. I think that’s the
challenging part, getting people to accept these songs the way they
accepted those System songs. I put in just as much of myself, and I
feel they’re just as powerful as anything else I’ve ever written in
my life.
"In my opinion, they’re more rock-oriented, they’re more melodic in
a lot of ways," Dolmayan says of the Scars songs. "There is a darker
tone to a lot of the stuff, which to me is reminiscent of, like,
the Kinks or bands like Pink Floyd. I’ve always been attracted to
dark melodies, so that aspect of it really works for me."
The songs are definitely more varied, ranging from the raucous to the
reflective and exposing a new array of influences, from a musician
who cites David Bowie, Roxy Music, Brian Eno and ’60s pop on one side,
and the Stooges, the Ramones and the Dead Boys on the other. Malakian
even suggests the late punk provocateur GG Allin as the inspiration
for the caustically explicit "Chemicals."
Then there’s "Babylon," a measured, atmospheric ballad with a big
finish and a tender refrain: "I like the way we slept on rooftops in
the summertime / If we were all marooned again I’d give my soul to
save your life."
"My family is now out of Iraq, but when the war was just starting,
a big part of my family lived in Iraq," Malakian explains. "That song
kind of came out of me at that time. I just felt helpless, I really
wanted to save them and get them out of there. That helplessness I
think comes out in the song.
"In the Middle East in the summertime, to keep cool a lot of people
sleep on the rooftops. When I visited Iraq when I was 14 years old,
we slept on the roof. It’s just kind of me talking to my family."
Like the solace he finds in the images and musical textures of
"Babylon," the serenity and order of a baseball game might represent
a relief from the chaos that seems to surface when he sits down to
write. No wonder Dodger Stadium is his favorite place.
He got to play out there once, in a celebrity exhibition game a few
years ago. Not surprisingly, it led to a song.
"I wrote a song for System called ‘Old School Hollywood Baseball’
that was inspired by this place. I played baseball here, and I went
home and I picked up my guitar, and bam, it came out. …
"You’ve just got to catch the influences when they come at you. Every
song I’ve written is luck, I think, it’s luck — ‘How did that just
happen?’ "