10 Greatest Nu Metal Albums Of All Time
4. Toxicity - System of a Down
By the time nu metal stumbled into the '00s, it had a lot of excess baggage to take care of. While bands like Korn and Slipknot were making waves on the scene with solid tunes, bands like Limp Bizkit were using the genre as an excuse to act like frat bros on MTV. Nu metal may have gotten far away from its roots, but Toxicity helped reinvent the sounds of angsty metal from the ground up.
Fresh off their debut, System of a Down arrived on the scene ready to kill on this album, sporting songs that were much more political than anyone could have predicted.
There may have been other bands complaining about their daddy issues, but System definitely had an axe to grind, whether it was talking about the meaninglessness of martyrdom on Chop Suey! or the straight statistics they spit at you about the incarceration system on Prison Song.
As opposed to the more cryptic writing behind most nu metal acts, System laid everything out bare on their records, almost making you feel like there was some part of their soul in between the notes.
At a time when nu metal was getting way too homogenous, Toxicity came out of left field and let everyone know that things were going to be different from now on. Drop the backwards hats... the revolution had begun.