LINKS:

scarsonbroadway.com

myspace.com/scarsonbroadway

John Dolmayan, best known for his drumming in the critically-acclaimed and important musical social force System Of A Down, is playing to new circles lately. New circles of his personality, that is, amidst the SOAD hiatus after that band’s “double album” companion records Mezmerize and Hypnotize rocked the world forward a few steps with protest songs like “B.Y.O.B.” and solemn singles like “Lonely Day”. After delivering such a massive undertaking and touring schedules needed to deliver something like the recent System records, the guys in the band realized that it would be natural and productive and even nourishing on a personal level to try different outlets for the extended future.

You can’t begrudge System of A Down for wanting a breather. It isn’t like they didn’t release five platinum records and become one of the scant few artists in history (like, the Beatles and umm…DMX) to release two #1 albums in one year. But Dolmayan hasn’t exactly kept a low profile, appearing on records of all the other System members, including vocalist Serj Tankian’s recent Elect The Dead solo effort.

Make no mistake, Dolmayan’s primary focus circa 2008 is backing Scars On Broadway, the amazing and varied new creative noise baby of his and System Of A Down alumni/songwriting machine/axe wizard Daron Malakian. Scars explores more of the fertile melodic ground System featured, while stripping things down to a more bare bones, yet still antics-filled and effectively strange, punkish mélange. Malakian also sounds more confident singing than ever, good when you are suddenly the lead vocalist. He delivers on the promising seeds planted during Steal This Album’s Beatle-esque Serj duet “Roulette.” This is a self-titled debut very worth checking out.

Tunes like “Babylon” and “Enemy” highlight social themes of alienation and feelings of being marooned in some near-alien environment of an often horrific external world. Lead off single “They Say” goes so far as to take near pleasure in getting rid of so many annoying people if a huge, world-ending catastrophe happened. “Stoner Hate” practically recommends taking matters into your own hands!

But despite the disgruntled themes that run through this record, the chord struck is of a deep and perceptive wish that things were better for humanity and the planet. Rising to a mellow and even more evident crest, numbers like the vulnerable sounding “Universe”, a song that showcases Malakian’s range as a (and the project’s primary) songwriter, and draws from a well of sources like Neil Young and Bowie. Then, when you think you’ve gotten used to the twists and turns (as well as consistencies) of the Scars on Broadway debut, Malakian and Dolmayan throw in something like “Cute Machines”, which retains vibes of manic alienation, but ventures into near Sonic Youth “Titanium Expose” guitar territories, only if Malakian was singing his eyes out of his head over Dolmayan’s frantic blast drumming! Awesome.

This new band, which would fit nicely on a bill with swamp/blues-garage singer Dax Riggs’ current We Sing Of Only Blood Or Love outfit, show tremendous promise. They seem like how System must have been at the get-go, a whirl of ideas and energy, only honed via the experience that these world-class professionals have notched up over the years. Along with Zack de la Rocha’s new One Day As A Lion vocal riffing this year, Scars are going to be turning some of the most heads eager for something pissed and contemplative to rock around the clock. Even the new band name suggests the struggle of making it. (Think of the musical A Chorus Line.)

I had all this in mind when I was preparing to call John Dolmayan and then found out an hour before interview time that he also owns and runs a very healthy, growing young online comic book retail/distro company called Torpedo (torpedocomics.com) and is a lifelong comics collector! Suddenly my nerd radar lit up into the red and all my thoughts turned to this. It is a super informative site that can even tell you down to fine details of whatever comic you ordered, things like Alien Legion (Vol.2) #1 was drawn by Larry Stroman, for example. I had to know more.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: I wanna talk about the record but just found out you have an online comic book retail company Torpedo. I love comics. My half-sister, her grandfather was Burne Hogarth who drew the Tarzan comics from 1937 through the forties. He also did Tarzan Of The Apes in the early seventies, one of the first graphic novels.

JOHN DOLMAYAN: That’s killer, man!

MYE: I just saw you have this Torpedocomics.com and I love the logo. It looks kind of like it’s from the Golden Age of comics. How long you been doing that?

JD: Well, I’ve been into comics for over twenty five years, but I opened up the company six months ago and have been working on it for ten years.

MYE: Just planning it?

JD: Yeah, planning. I have 15 million books.

MYE: That’s insane!

JD: It’s getting there, man. It’s a lot of work.

MYE: [laughing] Do you have plastic sleeves for all of them?

JD: Yeah, everything’s in plastic, at least. Some of them are in Mylar, actually. I am doing San Diego Comic Con next week, so I’m really excited.

MYE: You have your own booth?

JD: Yeah, eight booths. Crazy.

MYE: You have distro too, right? So if I’m looking for a 1974-75 Rima The Jungle Girl from DC Comics mini series with covers by Joe Kubert?

JD: Mini-series or regular series?

MYE: I think it’s a seven issue mini-series.

JD: I’m sure I have it. I have everything. [laughing]

MYE: Awesome. I also saw you have original art for sale from creators. You have some Bart Sears items on there. I love his Turok: Dinosaur Hunter series from the early nineties.

JD: I do have original art, yeah. The original art is just stuff I bought, man. For the original art I have about 400 pieces and 200 are in my personal collection that I’m gonna keep. I have some Frank Frazetta’s and John Byrne pages, you name it.

MYE: Good luck with that.

JD: Thanks bro. It’s great to be able to follow your passion regardless of what forms it takes.

MYE: Speaking of it, the last comic book question, which kind of ties into System Of A Down/Scars On Broadway’s current events themes is, did you ever read that Brian K. Vaughn book Pride of Baghdad about some Lions whose zoo is bombed in Iraq and they wander around the countryside looking at war atrocity? It’s dope. He also writes that DC/Vertigo series Y: The Last Man.

JD: No, I never saw that. It sounds pretty crazy!

MYE: [laughing] I guess I should get to the record. A theme of the Scars On Broadway debut seems to be about people in denial about life and trying to not go crazy having to deal with them. In particular the single “They Say”, or in “3005” Daron sings about “ressurection junkies losing ground.” People say sin and rock n’ roll are ruining the world but it seems Armaggedon is gonna come from environmental problems or pollution and religious fanatics.

JD: I don’t know what’s gonna happen to the planet. I know the planet’s gonna survive us. It’ll go on without us. It’s just a matter of how long we wanna be here, I guess. We’ve done a lot to destroy the environment in the last hundred years especially, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reverse that. We’re fully capable of enacting real change. It’s about whether or not we wanna make the sacrifices to do that. I don’t think it is necessarily that much of a sacrifice to not throw trash on the ground and try not to use wasteful products too much. Figure out another way to propel our cars and other things based on fossil fuels in the next twenty years. It’s just basic stuff. It’s not like we have to completely change our way of living. We just have to adjust it.

MYE: The technology is there, man.

JD: I don’t even think it’s that big a deal. As soon as they create a car that goes fast enough for me, that has enough balls, I’ll buy it!

MYE: [laughing]

JD: They just haven’t done it yet, besides the Tesla. We’re just right there, man. The bottom line is people have to talk about it because if they don’t it is not gonna happen. You have to envision it and make it a reality, that way people that are listening and wanna make money in the future have to be into doing it.

MYE: See that there’s the market.

JD: I know Toyota is making a killing off the Prius and have to be laughing all the way to the bank right now. Honestly, that’s what it takes in order to get things done. There has to be someone who can make an enormous amount of money otherwise no one really gives a shit. The oil companies are in no hurry to invent another way of fueling our power. They’re making tons of money, spending twenty million dollars on license plates. They’re pissing away our cash whenever possible and the bottom line is, what reason do they have not to?

MYE: Morals aren’t going to work for them.

JD: Have we given them a reason? People aren’t not going to drive in protest. We can’t. People have got to go to work. We’re not living in villages. There’s a reality on the other side of it though. You can’t say “Oh, I want the world to change,” and then want it to happen and not be realistic about it. Usually the people that are in the movie business or rock stars, they are the ones that talk the most shit and then in their personal lives they do nothing, you know. It’s one thing to say people are starving in Africa when you are making fifty to sixty million a year and another to do something about it. Say, hey, maybe I’m going to donate twenty five percent of my income and actually go over there and see a way to help these people make food for a living and not just for a month, understand what I’m saying?

MYE: Yeah. Like building a village.

JD: If you want to enact a change, it’s not just throwing money at it. There’s a very old saying that I’m gonna butcher even worse than George W. Bush does trying to talk, but it’s like “Give a man a fish and he eats but teach a man to fish and he eats for life.” That’s truth. Let’s say we go to Africa and feed people for a year, what do they do when we’ve gone back to our lives? If we set up farming and irrigation and a way for them to live, then they don’t need us in a couple years. I’m using Africa as an example because it seems like it is often in trouble.

MYE: Some of it is unbelievable.

JD: I look at America as unbelievable sometimes when I hear about people starving here, or health care or anything else. We live in a capitalist society and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you work harder than everyone else and sacrifice and do things the right way then sure, you deserve it. I don’t want to see it done on the pain of somebody else. That’s what’s good about being a musician. If you can do it on the level we’re at you can make a really good living and do it without hurting people.

MYE: Inspire people.

JD: Yeah. I’m sorry bro, could you hold on for one second. I’m pulling into Burger King.

MYE: [laughing]

JD: [talking to drive thru window] I’d like two cheeseburgers and a regular coke and what’s this new cookie dough pie all about? Have you eaten it? Is it the bomb or should I pass?

BURGER KING EMPLOYEE: It’s good.

JD: You don’t sound too confident. Is it good or great?

BK EMPLOYEE: I’d eat one.

JD: Well, let me get one. You’re a good salesman.

MYE: [laughing] You weren’t kidding.

JD: Yeah man, I’m hungry. I’m putting crap in my body right now but I gotta eat. I eat three meals a day at my mom’s house and get good nutrition there and try to eat sushi once a week and then occasionally I eat Burger King.

MYE: I think if you eat some junk food then you can handle it and your immune system is exposed to everything in the spectrum.

JD: It’s all about balance, bro.

MYE: I agree. [laughing]

JD: [to Burger King] Can I get some ketchup? Sorry, man, I hope you don’t think this is rude. Don’t worry, we’ll go over on our interview time. I won’t cut you off.

MYE: [laughing] I think it’s funny. But yeah, even after the hiatus of System Of A Down, you’ve all done some high profile things. People thought you might dissapear for a while but Serj Tankian toured with the Foo Fighters and you and Daron now have Scars On Broadway, and System bassist Shavo Odadjian has worked with Bad Brains recently, who I’m friends with. I was psyched. With Scars On Broadway it seemed Daron took a while to decide what direction he wanted the band to go in and so was it that you wanted to play music of a sort that you didn’t feel was as defined before when people think of you or do you just wanna stay busy during the hiatus?

JD: This is something Daron has been planning since we decided to take the hiatus. I think the purpose of taking the hiatus was to explore and do things we didn’t really have an opportunity to do because we were very involved with System and System required a lot of attention. Me, personally, I’m a one band guy. I generally concentrate on one thing at a time and dedicate everything I have to that and so I am dedicated right now only to Scars. I think because of that, I can do a better job on it.

MYE: More focused.

JD: Right. If System was operating right now, I wouldn’t be able to take Scars where it needs to be, wherever that ends up being. It’s important to concentrate on it and that would’ve detered me from doing what I’d want to do with System, too, if we were doing both projects at the same time.

MYE: Also you did double records and it was so much energy to make Mezmerize and Hypnotize , so it’s good to take a breather from System a while and see what direction or whatever is right for next instead of rushing.

JD: It’s necessary for all bands at some point to take a breath and work with other people. In effect, see other people. Hang with other musicians and expand horizons and come back stronger and better for it. We can only add to System Of A Down by playing with other people because it gives us different perspectives. That’s why I don’t believe in a monogamous relationship. You get bored of each other and then you start resenting each other.

MYE: It’s gotta be pretty special or magical to work a lot.

JD: Forever? That’s ridiculous! Some of the concepts we abide by are ridiculous. If you had 10,000 years of life do you think you could deal with one woman?

MYE: It depends on how talented she was. [laughing] I’d like to try with that actress Monica Belluci.

JD: I don’t care how talented she is. No matter how hot she is, you might love somebody but eventually you’ll want to be with someone else. That’s just nature. It’s our instinct and exists for a reason and we fight against that but it exists for a reason. There’s a reason for that. I don’t know what that reason is. At least it is the bullshit line that I tell my girlfriend when she’s mad at me.

MYE: [laughing] As for the direction of Scars On Broadway, it still has some of the frenetic energy of System and also more melodic rock. “Serious” and other stuff like the top of “Stoner Hate” is still pretty slamming but then there’s “Funny” which has great melodies and melodic touches. Less than metal, some of the heavier parts on this new band’s album are more crazed punk rock shit, thrashy punk rock. In System Of A Down, the closest song I’d compare it to would be that one “A.D.D.”, one of the best songs on Steal This Album.

JD: Well, there’s definitely…hold on. [Talking to Dad] Just stay there, it’s ok. Park there, I’ll park around the corner. No, no, you’re already there. [back to me] Sorry, my Dad just got to my house for some reason.

MYE: You got back from Burger King that fast!?

JD: I drive fast, brother. That’s why I can’t really drive a Prius right now. I got two tickets in one month for going 130 miles an hour. I got out of one of them ‘cuz there was a fire and the cop couldn’t get to the court in time.

MYE: [laughing] That’s fucked up. Are you in Vegas or L.A.?

JD: I’m in Vegas.

MYE: Less traffic.

JD: There’s a lot less traffic. It’s a wonderful place to live. First of all, you get treated like an adult here and if you wanna go out at two in the morning and have a drink you can do that without someone telling you at one thirty that now you aren’t allowed to do something. Some rules are ridiculous.

MYE: In New York you’re not supposed to really start the most serious wave of drinking until 1:30 in the morning unless you start at Noon or something like me!

JD: Noon is a bit early for me, but when I go out at night I like to have a nice dinner around eight and think about going out at eleven and make an evening. If I go out in L.A. at eleven, to get a good buzz I have to pound drinks and get the hell out’ve there. I don’t wanna have to do anything unless I want to do it. We have kids getting killed in other countries right now and people here tell us we can’t drink past one? If we want to do it we should be able to do it.

MYE: Yeah, man.

JD: Anything has to be done within reason but a lot of people can’t tell themselves to take it easy either, though.

MYE: And a lot of people might not know how to drive fast good like you do. [laughing]

JD: Well, it works ok in Germany! They have the Autobahn and it has no speed limit!

MYE: This Scars record has 15 songs and Daron is always writing up a storm. System’s double album set and Steal This Album both had a lot of songs. It’s cool how it isn’t just ten songs like a lot of bands do the minimum these days. Reminds me of the Ramones or Bad Brains’ Rock For Light album. More for the fans.

JD: Here’s what I think. If it works with five songs, great. If eighteen, fine. It depends. If they are all seventeen minute songs, nobody wants to hear eighteen of those.

MYE: There isn’t room on one CD.

JD: If the songs are two and a half minutes you can do fourteen, whatever, because it is not becoming boring and there’s things about it that still work.

MYE: It pays attention to the art and the listener.

JD: Mmhmm. I don’t like albums too long with lots of fillers on them. I’d rather have an album that’s short and you want more at the end.

MYE: Scars On Broadway has fifteen but you could have more.

JD: What I’d ultimately like, and I’m sure Daron feels the same way, is for people to finish the album and want more. Be unsatisfied and want to hear more. You don’t want people wondering when it is gonna be over halfway through a record. Live, we don’t have much choice. We only have one album of material. I like to do sets that are an hour and fifteen minutes long. You have a nice opener and do an hour and twenty minutes and people had a good time and are satisfied. Some bands play for three hours. I don’t know how they do it.

MYE: And still sound good by the end.

JD: I could definitely play for three hours. My issue is sustaining the fans interest.

MYE: Or the fans not passing out from the heat.

JD: Yeah, that could be a problem, too.

MYE: “Insane” or “Kill Eachother/Live Forever” seem like they’d be fun to play. You’re developing a new relationship to this material. How has it been debuting this stuff live?

JD: It’s been great. People have been going nuts. Keep in mind the album’s not out yet but people have been hitting YouTube and digging it and we’ve gotten a really good response so far.

MYE: How’s your headspace playing this stuff or tracking versus playing with Serj’s solo stuff or System Of A Down?

JD: It really isn’t much different. I walk into the studio the same way and do the best I can.

MYE: Lastly, the band’s Scar Your Mind contest, where you allow fans to write poetry or art about the music or some photo content you gave to fans, how did that come about?

JD: It’s just a sign of the times. When you’re in an internet age you are more involved with each others lives and the fans than ever before. We’re fortunate to be able to do that type of stuff.

MYE: Thanks man, it was cool talking. I love your work.

JD: Thanks, bro. Thanks for putting up with my fast food run.