System Of A Down guitarist/vocalist Daron Malakian made a plea for unity during his band’s headlining set at the 2026 ‘Sick New World‘ festival in Las Vegas, NV over the weekend. Malakian took to social media today, April 27th, to share the below footage from that show. Taking an advantage of a lull in the set, Malakian pointed out that despite his own group’s well-documented dichotomy of political beliefs, they are able to function by putting friendship and brotherhood first.
Malakian‘s address to the audience read as follows [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“Let me tell you something. System Of A Down is not a cult.
System Of A Down is a band, with four members. Four members who are good people, who have different beliefs about different things, different solutions about complex problems.
Stop letting the media divide you.
Stop letting the government divide you.
If we can be on stage together and have different thoughts and different beliefs, you can be together too. For those of you who disagree with me, pull the tapeworm out of your ass.”
As you’d expect from his closing statement, the band then dove into “Needles” off of their 6x multi-platinum sophomore album “Toxicity“. In recent years, System Of A Down have found themselves repeatedly pulled into the ongoing culture wars thanks to the contradicting political beliefs held by their members.
Vocalist Serj Tankian‘s long-championed activism for causes often aligned with the left has influenced numerous works from the group, as well his extracurricular activities. Those controversial beliefs however have often directly clashed with drummer John Dolmayan‘s divisive right-wing stances, including publicly backing U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
While the differing political opinions found within the band have created controversy among System Of A Down’s fanbase, in the past, those opposing schools of thought even led to tensions between members of the band themselves.
In what was perhaps a symptom of the increased weaponization of politics in modern times, Malakian himself even faced significant online criticism in the wake of being seen as being too neutral with his own political messaging with his Scars On Broadway project last year.
