Daron Malakian has said that the new Scars on Broadway songs could have been System of A Down songs, and that hasn't been more evident than with the new single, "Dictator."
I can't place which SOAD song exactly it reminds me of, but certain parts of the song structure certainly remind me of later SOAD songs, perhaps "B.Y.O.B." Take a listen:
According to Malakian in an interview with Rolling Stone, he wrote and recorded the entire album himself in 2012.
I recorded the album and then around that time System started playing live again. So every time we'd play live, there'd be conversations like, 'Maybe we'll do an album.' So being the guy who wrote the majority of almost all the System songs in the past, I was like, 'Alright, let me see what's happening with it. Let me hold onto these songs and let me see how this develops.' We talked about it and we weren't all on the same page. Not everybody was into the idea. But every time we played live, it kept coming up.
I just got to the point now where a lot of people were asking about the Scars album – I hear it all the time – so I was like, 'I'm gonna put this album out.' Not knowing what's happening with System has kept me from putting my own stuff out. Too much time has passed, and I'm really excited to finally get some music out finally.
As far as new System of A Down, it's just not happening at the moment. Daron recently told Kerrang!:
"I don't really write for people, and if no one heard what I wrote, I would still write songs," he said. "It's just what I do. If I'm not writing I feel like I'm not doing what I'm here to do. So I have a lot of music that's still to be released in the future, whether it's with System or Scars. I have a lot of material.”
"I think the Scars stuff tends to take more of a rock direction, even though I would say there's a lot of material on [the upcoming Scars On Broadway] album that I think has more of a System of a Down flavor in it than maybe the first Scars album did," he said. "As of right now, System's not making albums, so this is the project through which I'm releasing my songs."
Dictator is out on July 20th. Pre-order below.
