Daron Malakian: SOAD never censored for openly speaking about Armenian Genocide

System Of A Down (SOAD) guitarist and Scars on Broadway frontman Daron Malakian has said in an interview with Armenian television personality Stepan Partamian that SOAD has always been speaking openly about the Armenian Genocide and has never been censored, Blabbermouth.net reports.

Speaking of the Scars on Broadway’s new single “Lives,” Malakian said: “Well, we always hear about how we’d been killed. We’d see pictures of our ancestors with their heads on top of each other. SYSTEM has always talked about the genocide [of 1915] in our songs, but I wanted to take another approach and celebrate the people who survived the genocide and the contributions that Armenians have made since then and give a song that’s not necessarily about us being victims, but our existence in itself is victory.”

He said the song “is asking people to be proud, to not be afraid to be proud and stand up for yourself and don’t always look at ourselves as, ‘Well, they killed us and we were victims’. Look at us also as a small people in the world, we’re not that many in numbers, but it seems like we’ve accomplished a lot. There is something different in our DNA.”