Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway Dictator

A new album by System of a Down guitarist and co-vocalist Daron Malakian's side-project Scars on Broadway is coming out in July. It will be called 'Dictator'. Malakian recorded the whole album by himself in 2012, but he put it on hold, because System was starting to do concerts again. He kept the material unreleased for a possible new SOAD album. Looks like he got tired of waiting and the record is coming out, exactly as it was done six years ago. He also changed the band name from simply 'Scars on Broadway' to 'Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway' to emphasize, that this is basically a solo project in which he works with different musicians, depending on the type of music he's creating (even John Dolmayan, who is the drummer of SOAD and played on the first SOB record, is not on board this time). The first song, 'Lives' came with the album announcement. It sounds a lot like SOAD and the song and the video both have a very strong Armenian influence. The lyrics deal with his people's ability to survive the hardships they have suffered in the past. The timing of the single's release is especially interesting, since the annual memorial day for the Armenian Genocide is taking place tomorrow (April 24th) and there is currently large wave of demonstrations going on in Yerevan for the resignation of prime minister Serzh Sargsyan (who was trying to build an authoritarian system) and they seem to be succeeding. Daron's System bandmate Serj Tankian is also very vocal about the situation, he even shared a clip of a new song called 'Electric Yerevan'. That is hopefully coming out soon as well.