In Retrospect: "System of a Down - Toxicity"

Toxicity is the second studio effort by the Armenian-American nu metal band System of a Down. It was released on September 4, 2001 through the label Columbia Records.  

Background/Writting Process

The band released their first album in June 1998, and had success with hits Sugar and Spiders, which led them to open for Slayer and Metallica and perform on Ozzfest. After the Ozzfest, the band also toured with bands Fear Factory and Incubus .  

The writting process for the album started when the band stopped touring after the release of the debut album. The band was exploding with creativity when in studio, making atleast 45 songs, where 33 of them were recorded. The band had a lot of trouble making a setlist, because they liked all the songs they recorded, but later settled with their 14 favourite songs.  

The album is described with different genres such as: alternative metal, nu metal, folk, jazz and even Greek music, which are all correct, as the album is very musically diverse. Guitarist Malakian stated: "I wanted to add a bit more harmony in the songs and required tastefully mixing in some softer guitars between the really heavy parts".

Malakian also mentioned the Beatles were a big influence on the album, because it showed the band how to write songs with heavy riffs and strange structures, yet sound very pop at the same time: "Going into it, I knew Serj wanted to sing more, so I guess that was a kind of a progression and an evolution for the band. I wanted to do all that, yet not lose the heaviness of the band and I guess the hard, punk, metal aspect. You could lose that sometimes when you get a little too eclectic. So we were just trying to balance that fine line and not lose the fans."  

The Lyrics

The band had strange lyrics like "wired were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot" and "pull the tapeworm out of your ass," which the producer Rick Rubin quite liked, leaving Tankian and Malakian to leave them as they were without any change.   

The song Chop Suey is according to bassist Shavo Odadjian about drug addiction while Prison Song is about the overpopulation of prisons:  "It's about the unfairness of mandatory minimum sentences and how there are about 2,000,000 Americans in jail, and a lot of them are in there for marijuana possession and things of that sort. Instead of rehabilitating men who have drug problems, they're throwing them in prison. That's not really solving anything.” Bounce talks about group sex, Psycho is about groupies and ATWA is about Charles Manson’s trial and his personal beliefs.  

In Retrospect...

The first time I have heard music from this band was through the rhythm game Rock Band. After playing B.O.Y.B. I looked up the band on Youtube, where I got a suggestion for an album called Toxicity. After listening to it for the first time, I didn’t initially like it, but when I gave it another listen a couple of years later when I had listened to a lot of different genres of music, I instantly loved it for its wide range of different music genres mashed into a single nu metal record. If you didn’t listen to this record yet, or if you have, but didn’t like it, give it a listen and you might just like it.