System of A Down's Daron Malakian (guitars, vocals, songwriter) and John Dolmayan (drums) have joined forces to form a new band, Scars On Broadway.

"Accompanied by some great musicians, we are preparing to go into the studio really soon to record our debut album," Malakian writes on the group's MySpace page. "John and I are really excited about this new project and can't wait to get on stage and perform live for you guys."

Malakian co-produced (with Rick Rubin) System of A Down's multi-platinum albums "Toxicity" (2001) and the dual-disc "Mezmerize/Hypnotize" (2005), all three of which hit the No. 1 spot on The Billboard 200 chart.

System of A Down has been on hiatus since last year, with its members working on various side projects. This has naturally led to rumors that the band was breaking up permanently. But bassist Shavo Odadjian told The Pulse of Radio that System of A Down is far from over. " is alive and well. We're just not working together right now. We kind of like split up at first, but you know, we're brothers, man, we'll take bullets for each other. So it's like, you kind of miss each other after a while and you, one guy makes the first move, then another starts making phone calls....this is a juggernaut, man. SystemSystem of A Down is my lifeline. It'll never go away. We could not make a record for 10 years — that's not gonna happen, but I'm just saying we could — and we'll come back strong."

Odadjian is launching a new online initiative called urSession.com (pronounced "your session"), a web-based music community that also doubles as a record company. The site is scheduled to go live within a few weeks.

The bassist is continuing his career as a video director and working on a side project with the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA that's called Achozen.

System of A Down vocalist Serj Tankian will release his first solo CD, titled "Elect the Dead", on October 23.