Scars on Broadway Delivers Protest Song for People Who Think Reading Is a Psy-Op

Daron Malakian has emerged with a new Scars on Broadway track so catastrophically embarrassing it feels engineered in a lab to answer the question: “What if a midlife crisis wrote lyrics?” The song, paired with a visualizer that resembles a rejected intro for a YouTube conspiracy channel, marks the moment a 50 year old man fully commits to posting like a caffeinated teenager who just discovered the word “propaganda.” This is the guy who once helped drive the political ferocity of System of a Down, now delivering a song with the intellectual rigor of a monster truck commercial. The lyrics open with “I’m sick of the left and I’m sick of the right,” which is the battle cry of someone whose deepest political belief is “I do not like when people argue on Twitter.” Malakian delivers the line as though he is dropping forbidden wisdom, but it lands with the force of a wet napkin. His grand insight into national polarization is basically: “Both sides are cringe,” spoken with the confidence of a man who thinks refusing to read the news makes him the only one who truly understands anything. Even “Clickbait causes the cage fights” reads less like a criticism of media sensationalism and more like the ramblings of someone who thinks every headline is personally out to get him.

What is remarkable is how thoroughly Malakian manages to misunderstand every issue he tries to comment on. The man who once played a central role in System of a Down’s anti war canon is now rhyming “sheep” with “sleep” like a middle school dipshit. Gone is the sharp systemic critique, and in its place we get the political depth of a Facebook uncle who insists he is “just asking questions.” The entire “far middle” persona he has adopted feels like the final form of a guy who skimmed one meme about the dangers of division and decided he alone has transcended earthly ideology.

In reality, Malakian has simply arrived at the laziest political stance imaginable. He refuses to acknowledge that taking an informed position might require understanding what is actually happening. Thus we get the deranged equivalency in which antifascists and actual fascists are apparently mirror images because, you know, sometimes both groups yell. This is a worldview for people who think protesting genocide and carrying a swastika flag are comparable simply because both involve strong feelings. His recent social media post doubles down on this toddler level logic, lumping together Black Lives Matter, human rights activists, and community organizers with the extreme right as if “people standing up for their lives” and “people who want to take those lives away” exist on the same moral continuum. It is not only incorrect, it is the intellectual equivalent of eating chalk and huffing aerosol.

The middle chunk of the song descends into self parody so fast it is honestly impressive. “I am a rude crude rabbit with a really bad habit” is the kind of lyric you write when your only goal is to rhyme by any means necessary, even at the cost of sounding like an edgelord Easter Bunny. Malakian announcing that “all my guns are automatic” is not badass. It is cosplay. It is the lyrical version of a fifty year old man buying a katana at the mall. The entire attempted persona, this gritty bullet spitting dirt dwelling renegade routine, feels like Malakian trying to audition for Slipknot while simultaneously insisting he has never heard of politics. And the endless repetition of “Your lives burn in the fire” is so aggressively nonspecific it borders on performance art. A protest song in which nothing is identified, explained, or confronted is not a protest song. It is a temper tantrum set to guitar.

The tragedy is that Malakian was once part of a band that was genuinely revered for its political clarity. System of a Down gave us songs that ripped into government corruption, corporate power, imperialism, genocide, and systemic violence with precision and purpose. Malakian, in the present day, gives us a man yelling at a metaphorical fire he refuses to describe. The contrast is so stark it feels like satire. This is not the work of a rebel. It is the work of someone desperate to feel rebellious without the inconvenience of meaning anything. What he calls “speaking truth” is really just noise. What he believes is “too real for the sheep” is actually incoherent centrism arranged into rhyme. His refusal to name villains is not bravery. It is confusion. His both sides sermon is not enlightened. It is hollow. The entire track radiates the energy of a once great musician proudly stepping onto the stage to declare: “I have read absolutely nothing and I am extremely angry about it.”

In the end, Malakian’s new output is not edgy. It is not dangerous. It is not boundary pushing. It is a political shrug wrapped in tough guy cosplay. It is the sound of a legendary artist who once helped articulate the horrors of war now struggling to articulate anything more complex than “everyone annoys me.” This is rebellion with no target, rage with no brain, and philosophy with no point. It is not just a fall from grace. It is a nosedive. Malakian, now fifty, is writing like a man who just got grounded for the first time, and the result is a song that answers the question: “What happens when someone runs out of things to say but refuses to stop talking?”

Watch the video below, then report back on whether you laughed, cried, or simply experienced existential dread.