So these Armenian-American maniacs from Glendale hit it big in the late 90s with their self-titled debut, and man, nobody was ready for what came next. Serj Tankian’s operatic wailing mixed with Daron Malakian’s schizo guitar work and some seriously political lyrics about everything from prison systems to environmental destruction, these guys weren’t your typical nu-metal knuckleheads banging about relationships gone wrong.
Released in 2001, Toxicity basically took everything that made their debut weird and cranked it up to eleven. The album kicks off with “Prison Song,” which is Serj literally shouting crime statistics and corruption headlines over cement-hard riffs, somehow making straight-up sloganeering actually entertaining. Then you get the absolute madness of “Chop Suey!”, originally titled “Self-Righteous Suicide” but the label chickened out. That track’s all over the place in the best way possible, going from quiet acoustic strumming to full-blown hardcore mania, and it became their biggest hit for good reason. The title track “Toxicity” is another beast entirely, with its odd time signatures and that hypnotic “somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep” bit that just sticks in your brain.
What makes this album work is how System manages to be both completely unhinged and deadly serious at the same time. You’ve got songs about police brutality like “Deer Dance,” environmental destruction on “ATWA” (which references Charles Manson’s ecological beliefs, because of course it does), and even a tribute to group sex called “Bounce”. But somehow it all hangs together because these guys actually write songs instead of just recycling the same riff for three minutes like half the nu-metal scene was doing.
If you missed out on this one back in the day, now’s the time to dive in. Toxicity is basically the blueprint for how to do alternative metal right, it’s aggressive without being mindless, political without being preachy, and weird as hell without being pretentious about it. In a world where metal was getting predictable, System showed everyone there was still room to be completely mental and brilliant at the same time.