It’s hard to take in sometimes that System of a Down was first formed way back in 1994, generally before all the changes that happened to heavy metal and alternative music had really taken shape. But it didn’t take them long to find their feet and their standing in the music world, and with a style that was very much their own. After releasing their eponymous first album in 1998, the band comprising Serj Tankian on vocals, Daron Malakian on guitars, Shavo Odadjian on bass and John Dolmayan on drums moved back into the studio to produce their follow up, titled Toxicity. Also returning to produce the album was Rick Rubin, which only augured well for the final product.
Without a doubt, Toxicity is one of the most significant albums to come out since the turn of the century, and for many teenagers in particular at the time it was a defining album . And there are plenty of reasons for that. The album comes with riffs and lots of them, they're loud, they've got cool rhythm patterns (very much an underrated aspect of SOAD), the songs contain abstract and 'intellectual' lyrics, shouted vocals and more. It was one of those albums where you would allow people to try and attack you for being a fan of the band because the music was so different and out there, and that they obviously just ranted on about abstract things – and then you could have the sheer joy of actually telling these people what it was that the lyrics were talking about, and well and truly take the moral and intellectual high ground.
Toxicity copped a fair barrage on its release, especially as it occurred just a week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The heavily politically motivated lyrics on several songs caused a stir, and this then led to several songs being banned from their airwaves, in particular “Chop Suey” whose lyric of “I cry when angels deserve to die” was taken somewhat out of context during the hysteria following those attacks – even though the song and album were recorded and released well before the actual events. This didn’t stop the song being nominated for awards or selling huge numbers of copies as a single release.
After the attack, Tankian published an essay exploring 9/11’s fallout from multiple angles. “If we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, we’d be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation,” he wrote. “As shown from yesterday’s events, you cannot stop a person who’s ready to die.” Given recent events in Afghanistan, he was shown to be bang on.
Describing this album's musical content isn't easy. What you have here with Toxicity is an alternative album that transcends genre labels and many musical conventions, tying in an amazing range of genres with an incredibly diverse array of (generally) short tracks. There's thrash metal, hardcore punk, Greek and Middle Eastern music, folk, jazz, progressive rock, nu metal, art rock, and probably a dozen others in the mix. Listing here the bands that SOAD have at different times cited as their musical influences would take longer than these podcast episodes usually come out to. It all feels like the ingredients to a primordial soup, but this album sounds surprisingly fresh, creative and original even 20 years after its release by an alt-metal band. It is certainly no sophomore slump. The songs are generally pretty short and rock hard at high tempos, which can be a blessing and a curse; the fast tempo helps them fit in uncommon time signatures and gives them flexibility in structure, but this also becomes somewhat predictable and uniform as the album goes on, and many songs sound underdeveloped because of how short they are. One aspect of this album that I'm not sure many people talk about is how progressive it is, and this is probably one of the few albums that could be called both progressive metal and hardcore punk. In these short songs, the band fits in various structures and completely ignores the concept of a normal song structure. Even on the lead hit “Chop Suey!”, the band fits in various, diverse segments and abandons any transitions, but it works really, really well. The melody and catchiness also really helps, but it's an oddball song that somehow still became their biggest hit. And, even though the songs are structurally similar, they don't sound much like each other. There isn't one song here that you would think, "gee this sounds just like the last one".
Even for music in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, given all of the ways heavy metal had evolved and broken off and formed new extensions of themselves, this was DIFFERENT. This was frantic yet serene. It was angry yet intellectual. It was madness wrapped in a cocoon of sanity. It was strictly formed lyrical and musical tomes smashed by a sledgehammer and thrown at you from a distance of ten paces. Noting about it actually seemed to fit together, and yet it made perfect sense. It was never designed to be sat down and listened to in your armchair with a nice hot cup of tea, though 20 years on their would be youth of that generation who now do exactly that.
It’s possible I may never have truly discovered this album if I wasn’t involved with younger people at the time of its release through the cricket club I played in. The album first came to me from one of my best friends on one of his sojourns down from the big city, and I was pressed to listen to it more by the youngsters I then played cricket with on weekends. I didn’t take much convincing. Everything about it was a part of what I had listened to in music for 15 years or more before its release, it’s just that I didn’t always get all of that on one album, or in this case in a 30 second period of each song on the album.
Is it a surprise that five albums came about really quickly... and then the band went on a hiatus that has produced almost zero new music since? No, probably not, and that isn’t always a bad thing. Some things are hard to both reproduce and also to follow up. Toxicity is a product of its time, tied to it by the fact that it reflects so many different styles of music in one 14 song album that all more or less came into being in that same era. Everyone hopes for a new album from the band, much like they did after the same hiatus periods taken by bands like Faith No More and Soundgarden, and yet when they returned with new albums so many years after their previous ones, there was the general feeling of disappointment.
20 years on, Toxicity still brings out the same feelings of joy and amazement that it did on its release, and for an album like that, that is quite an achievement.
Toxicity copped a fair barrage on its release, especially as it occurred just a week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The heavily politically motivated lyrics on several songs caused a stir, and this then led to several songs being banned from their airwaves, in particular “Chop Suey” whose lyric of “I cry when angels deserve to die” was taken somewhat out of context during the hysteria following those attacks – even though the song and album were recorded and released well before the actual events. This didn’t stop the song being nominated for awards or selling huge numbers of copies as a single release.
After the attack, Tankian published an essay exploring 9/11’s fallout from multiple angles. “If we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, we’d be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation,” he wrote. “As shown from yesterday’s events, you cannot stop a person who’s ready to die.” Given recent events in Afghanistan, he was shown to be bang on.
Describing this album's musical content isn't easy. What you have here with Toxicity is an alternative album that transcends genre labels and many musical conventions, tying in an amazing range of genres with an incredibly diverse array of (generally) short tracks. There's thrash metal, hardcore punk, Greek and Middle Eastern music, folk, jazz, progressive rock, nu metal, art rock, and probably a dozen others in the mix. Listing here the bands that SOAD have at different times cited as their musical influences would take longer than these podcast episodes usually come out to. It all feels like the ingredients to a primordial soup, but this album sounds surprisingly fresh, creative and original even 20 years after its release by an alt-metal band. It is certainly no sophomore slump. The songs are generally pretty short and rock hard at high tempos, which can be a blessing and a curse; the fast tempo helps them fit in uncommon time signatures and gives them flexibility in structure, but this also becomes somewhat predictable and uniform as the album goes on, and many songs sound underdeveloped because of how short they are. One aspect of this album that I'm not sure many people talk about is how progressive it is, and this is probably one of the few albums that could be called both progressive metal and hardcore punk. In these short songs, the band fits in various structures and completely ignores the concept of a normal song structure. Even on the lead hit “Chop Suey!”, the band fits in various, diverse segments and abandons any transitions, but it works really, really well. The melody and catchiness also really helps, but it's an oddball song that somehow still became their biggest hit. And, even though the songs are structurally similar, they don't sound much like each other. There isn't one song here that you would think, "gee this sounds just like the last one".
Even for music in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, given all of the ways heavy metal had evolved and broken off and formed new extensions of themselves, this was DIFFERENT. This was frantic yet serene. It was angry yet intellectual. It was madness wrapped in a cocoon of sanity. It was strictly formed lyrical and musical tomes smashed by a sledgehammer and thrown at you from a distance of ten paces. Noting about it actually seemed to fit together, and yet it made perfect sense. It was never designed to be sat down and listened to in your armchair with a nice hot cup of tea, though 20 years on their would be youth of that generation who now do exactly that.
It’s possible I may never have truly discovered this album if I wasn’t involved with younger people at the time of its release through the cricket club I played in. The album first came to me from one of my best friends on one of his sojourns down from the big city, and I was pressed to listen to it more by the youngsters I then played cricket with on weekends. I didn’t take much convincing. Everything about it was a part of what I had listened to in music for 15 years or more before its release, it’s just that I didn’t always get all of that on one album, or in this case in a 30 second period of each song on the album.
Is it a surprise that five albums came about really quickly... and then the band went on a hiatus that has produced almost zero new music since? No, probably not, and that isn’t always a bad thing. Some things are hard to both reproduce and also to follow up. Toxicity is a product of its time, tied to it by the fact that it reflects so many different styles of music in one 14 song album that all more or less came into being in that same era. Everyone hopes for a new album from the band, much like they did after the same hiatus periods taken by bands like Faith No More and Soundgarden, and yet when they returned with new albums so many years after their previous ones, there was the general feeling of disappointment.
20 years on, Toxicity still brings out the same feelings of joy and amazement that it did on its release, and for an album like that, that is quite an achievement.
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