Scars On Broadway Leave Marks on System, Serj.

by Jeff Boule in Album Reviews, Editorials, Musician Reviews, New Releases, Opinion Posts, Reviews, What's New, bands to watch

Once upon a time there were four Armenian boys who formed one of modern rock’s heaviest bands. I am recalcitrant to say heavy metal, as, especially with Scars On Broadway, all these artists can play soft as well as heavy. But back to our four Armenian friends, they formed a band. One considerably older gentleman (Serj Tankian), and the very unusual bass playing style and sound of Shavo Odajian, and two childhood friends Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan.

Now the childhood buddies had very distinct ideas on how the music should sound. But so too did the older gentleman and the unusual player. Four opinions in one small band is toxic.

At the absolute pinnacle of their career, nothing could go better, they decide now is the time to split up and do solo things. So the older Serj went and did his the fastest. His came out first to modest fan/critical response. Next came the project of the buddies Malakian and Dolmayan.

It is easy to see that Shavo will have a tough act to follow.

The heavy dissonances, speedy beats, time/tempo changes, humorous lyrics, inventive keyboards, all belong to the Malakian/Dolmayan connection.

Because as Scars on Broadway, these guys got it dead to rights!!!

If there is a feud between the friends and Serj, sorry Serj, you lose. This album is much, much more memorable than your solo effort Elect The Dead.

Even the tracks that I can’t consider my favorites still have me repeating the hooks and lyrics either after listening to it or just out of the blue. (Why was I singing “Babylon” in the shower this morning?)

If you like(d) System Of A Down you will get a tremendous boosh out of Scars On Broadway (SOB). Let’s get to the hilarity!

When you hear the intro note of “Serious” please prepare yourself as things explode right after that, and it is HARD!!! All the power that is/was System is in these tracks, in fact, until you get used to the ever shifting dynamics of the record, you may want to opt out of listening to it on headphones. It seems from song one that these guys have something to prove.

But this topic is stereotypical in songs dating back to the first recording ever. Girl gets serious, boy wants fun. From the heavy angst verses we float into an opposite yet befitting chorus where all the power-chord-heavy-distorted 16th notes of the verse fall out for whole note clean chords. Most likely on an SG, those guitars have such a unique, crisp clean sound. Mine was a 74. It was headstock heavy and I had to let it go as I was just beginning to become a Fender artist. The point is the dichotomy between parts is almost representative of both the points of view of said relationship and a precursor to how this album will play. From hard death metal to soft melodies, the songs change within themselves and from song to song. So much for your buck. Beware this track, it is communicable.

On the topic of melodies, we need to address the presence of John Dolmayan. While Malakian is responsible for pretty much all the instruments but drums and percussion, Dolmayan claims he is on-board because of the melodic nature of the music. The percussion on these tracks is as near perfect as they can be for this music. When Malakian comes up hard, Dolmayan has the appropriate drum line for the part. Consistently, with the possible exception of “Enemy”, where we are treated to SOB Disco, THAT beat could be tastier. I mean Dolmayan’s drumming on that track sounds like something from an album by Chic. I would have just preferred not to go to the Scars On Broadway Discotheque

The reason I refer to this album as “death anything” is because several tunes have the theme of death in them. “Funny” makes a pitch for the storyteller and his companion to “…join the dead…” I mean you can read some of the titles, Malakian is fascinated with death. Aren’t we all? It is also on this track that we hear some highly inventive synth use, and we will see plenty of this throughout the album.

I guess you can call some of these songs “driving music”, but “Exploding/Reloading” sounds like drag racing music. You can see the giant slicks on the back of a dragster! Especially the intro and bridge break with descending-a-plenty notes. The lyrics are a riot. The exploding/reloading chorus breaks into its drive and you go back to the drag strip for another go around. After that go around, the descending part comes around again but modulates all over the place. WILD!

More wild fun is “Stoner-Hate”. I mean the chorus lyric is hysterical. “When you sing LA LA LA LA LA Stoner-Hate has got your back, California’s been invaded by a hippie psychopath.” I’ll give you time to laugh, but these guys are a riot. I can’t even take the little folk break seriously while Malakian warbles Armenian with folk-ethnic-Armenian patterns behind it. I’m too busy laughing!

The next song, however, is no laughing matter. After the drop guitar chugs the intro chords, giant drums bring in the powerful and evolved “Insane”. It’s all tight rhythms with harmony vocals, and a full out change in between. “Let’s go insane again, bring back the pain again” chime the chorus vocals. A monumental but simple solo adorns a verse with echo throughout the mountains. This track also has more of the inventive, simple but effective keyboards Malakian used throughout this album. It has inspired me to go back to school. This Winter I will be studying synth programming. I seriously think any keyboardist worth their salt should pay attention to this, a guitar player’s album. Have I gone off my nut?

Now we go to “World Long Gone”, and this track is a powerhouse. Power chords on single notes that drop away for the bridge. Where Malakian claims to read the stars. Then the chorus asks the chilling question “How many people are starving, in this world, long gone.” He makes us laugh, he makes us think, he makes us ashamed… The dynamic is subtle on this track, but it will get you there, as most of these tracks will. The tightness of the riff at the end is amazing!

The tuned down guitar wails out bends as the intro for the oxymoronic “Kill Each Other/Live Forever” which is continually looking for a way to solve both riddles sets us up for the vocal exposure. Malakian proclaims he is “one that’s calling inside of your brain” and is trying to convince his body of it’s own mortality. Towards the end before the full out chorus end, there is a solo Calliope Mellotron part that is absurdly Beatles in nature. So how does Dolmayan rejoin into the song? Classic Ringo stumble drums into a tight roll. Perfect!

It’s during the intro to “Babylon” that you can really hear Malakian’s penchant for instruments tuned down. Attention burgeoning System/Scars guitarists: You want to tune down to drop D or C# or lately D# standard tunings, as Malakian has professed to using a drop tuning for a more dirty sound. Some of the lyrical imagery is romantic and sad. If you haven’t noticed yet, this is not music for optimists. Malakian’s worldview is highly critical. Unlike the more right leanings of some artists, where everything is right with America, say someone like Randy Newman, Malakian shows good and bad often in one song.

The techno intro to “Chemicals” lends itself to the comic nature of this song about abusive relationship and dependency. I love this song so much my best thing to ever happen to me and I are considering making it “our song” as it has certain relevance to our real life relationship story. But by the time the song is on it’s way out, and especially chorus parts are full blown, then they strip away to let Malakian ask us if we’d like to imbibe. Other than the techno underlying, and the hysterical lyrics (that I know our squeaky clean web site wouldn’t let through in a million years, ATTENTION MR WEBMASTER: I WOULD LIKE MY REVIEWS PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT THANK YOU) this has some interesting aspects, the vibrato guitar, some of the vocal techniques, and the drop-dead dynamics.

I guess I have just made a few people who want to be my “Enemy”. I know if I ever need to Disco, I can crank up “Enemy” and sure enough, Scars On Broadway won’t let me down! While the topic is highly green, being the enemies of the earth (deep stuff really) the beat and rhythm is silver like a disco ball. I mean this song is replete with octave bouncing bass and open and shut high hat ala everything from the Disco era. If you can’t hustle to the faster verses before the change, then you are dead! Oh yeah, and there’s a wah-wah-note guitar through some of the verses and intros, all I can picture is “That 70”s Show”!

Again, hard to take seriously.

Another example of thoughtful arranging, “Universe” has several breaks that while you think you may have heard them on a System album, I defy you to match the sections. But “Universe” kicks off with a grinding distorted guitar and builds into full mayhem rock, but quiets down for the Dylan-ish vocal, depicting natural disasters in the multiples. Once the chorus is finished asking mother earth ‘why oh why’, we go back to the apocalyptic description. The second chorus doubles to beg more for answers to nature’s woes. Acid rain, radiation, natural and non-natural events, all the while bouncing back and forth from tame to untamed dynamic. You would expect this to be the last track on the album but there is still more.

Lonely slide guitar starts off the futuristic tale of “3005” and the present day events that will lead society to this eventual fate. What fate is that? That the scientists will survive religious fervor to float in their space ships and shoot up the earth while laughing at the survivors plight! “While you’ll be sinking in the ocean I’ll be in my spaceship still alive. Yeah I’ll be there, shootin’ up your world, watching all the resurrection junkies losin’ ground.”

Next we have another one of those car-race-driving songs. But I would LOVE to see Fox TV use “Cute Machines” to promote the new Sarah Connor Chronicles Predator Show. I mean this has action written all over it, from the repetitive chorus and screaming vocals, to the singing “go” 32 times in a row three times in the song.

Unfortunately, they can’t all be gems and “Wh*ring Streets” is no gem. Yeah, it has that tuned-down guitar, and sharp harmony vocals, but it’s all been done before. If you were going to find a match for this album among your System Of A Down records, you could probably match this. There are some spots where you swear you are listening to a System Of A Down album with Malakian on lead vocals. Also another reason I file this under death-rock, this song deals with quite a bit of death.

That distorted grind guitar is back to herald the beginning of the end (to quote Ronald Reagan “What, it’s over already?”), that being the single “They Say” that you may have heard on the radio, or music channels. This culminates the album magnificently, heavy beats/rhythms, campy vocals, topical lyrics, towards the end we even get a guitar note being bended that almost sounds like it’s laughing at us, at the end of our world, and at the fact that we want to put this album back on and listen again.

My best thing to ever happen to me and I have iPods. This album is on both of our iPods (we update from the same Mac) and we both listen to it multiple times a day. Disregard when I said one particular track is communicable, the entire album (more or less) is infectious, habit-forming, and totally bad for you and it will corrupt the morals of minors.

Again, there are lyrics that would never fly if printed in this forum, so if you are investigating this for anyone under the age of 16, you may want to think better of it. The lyrics are quite blue, but for the burgeoning guitarist, vocalist, keyboardist, or just the rabid System fan, this album is a must.

Admit it, you want to run to Prex next time it’s open and buy this, don’t you?

First, I need to address the fine readers in regards to last week’s blog, I know it read a little rough, we were experiencing some browser trouble, we hope to have that fixed now.

Next week, I will be reporting on the Nine Inch Nails show in Philadelphia at the Spectrum or whatever they are calling it these days. I have reviewed the last two products Trent put out; check back next week for details on how he promotes those albums!