Daron Malakian

Daron Malakian is the guitarist and principal composer of System of a Down, and the source of the musical logic that makes the band impossible to confuse with any other. Born in Hollywood, California, in 1975, to an Armenian family from Iraq, he joined the group in 1995 and wrote most of its repertoire. His method is the swerve. A System track begins in thrash, shifts into a passage in waltz time, crosses a scale of Armenian origin, passes through something that sounds like surf music and returns to where it started — all in under three minutes, and without the seams looking arbitrary. That violent collage of references is deliberate composition, not accident, and it is why Toxicity (2001) still sounds strange twenty-five years later. From Mezmerize and Hypnotize (2005) onwards he began sharing lead vocals with Serj Tankian, which altered the band's internal balance. The tension between the two over creative control is cited as the main reason for the hiatus System went into after 2006, and which was only partly resolved: the group returned to the stage but never recorded another studio album. In the interval, Malakian has kept up Scars on Broadway, a project where he takes on voice, guitar and writing entirely, with records in 2008 and 2018.