Initially intended for the next Scars On Broadway album, “Protect The Land” ended up in System’s hands after Daron—who wrote it—sent the track to his bandmates in System. To the huge surprise of fans, it was released as a double single along with “Genocidal Humanoidz” without any prior teasing, marking the Armenian-American band’s first release in over 15 years.

The song was written in response to the acts of war and terrorism performed by Azerbaijan with the help of Turkey against the people of Armenia and Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. In an Instagram post, Serj Tankian explained:

The time to do this is now, as together, the four of us have something extremely important to say as a unified voice…The current corrupt regimes of Aliyev (President of Azerbaijan) in Azerbaijan and Erdogan (President of Turkey) in Turkey not only want to claim Artsakh and Armenia as their own, but are committing genocidal acts with impunity on humanity and wildlife to achieve their mission. They are banking on the world being too distracted with COVID, elections and civil unrest to call out their atrocities.

This conflict has a history dating back to 1988, but large-scale clashes erupted in September 2020, reigniting international attention, as highlighted in the song’s accompanying music video.