Scars On Broadway

“I feel like this is a brand new band,” Daron Malakian says. “Sometimes we tell people, ‘We’re Scars on Broadway.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, never heard of it.’ That’s cool,” he adds laughing.
Sure, in System of a Down, Malakian and John Dolmayan earned five straight platinum albums, including three #1’s, and headlined numerous festivals and sold out shows around the world. But he is sincere when he says, “I really didn’t feel like, ‘Hey, just because I’m Daron from System of a Down, everyone’s just going to bow down to this music.’” That he’s not taking anything for granted about Scars’ self-titled debut due out July 29 (Interscope) is evident in his enthusiasm as he talks about the immediate success of the powerful guitar driven rocking first single, “They Say.” “When I first heard that song on the radio, I was so excited, like I’d never had a song on the radio before. That’s really how I felt.”
For both Malakian and Dolmayan, the opportunity to prove themselves all over again is one they’re genuinely relishing, especially since both concede that after System’s decade-long run atop the metal and hard rock world they had started to lose that feeling of newness. Recalling Scars’ first two shows, including a critically acclaimed set at Coachella called “One of the festival’s hottest highlights,” by the L.A. Times, Dolmayan says, “At those first two shows, there was an energy in those rooms that I haven’t felt for a long time. And it’s nice to have that fresh feeling because with System we kind of took for granted that people would be there. We were playing old songs so the fans were still going to get crazy for them. With Scars, we don’t have that; we’ve got to earn everything and I like that. I like having to fight for things.”