System Of A Down: Every Album Ranked Worst To Best
2. Toxicity
Once they had their debut under their belt, there were a lot of different directions that System could go down. Either they could lean into their nu metal tendencies or they could become the more zany rock band that fans got to know them for on something like Sugar. They did neither...they decided to just make one of the greatest albums of the '00s.
Released just a week before 9/11, there was a lot more than just the political unrest on System's mind with this album. Across songs like Forest and ATWA, Daron Malakian really opened up in terms of his ideas about society, whether it be about the way we treat our environment or the millions of people who fail to speak up for the disenfranchised. Hell, even a song like Prison Song is able to spit straight statistics at you in the pre chorus and still be catchy as hell.
However, the real meat of the songs come in the singles. Compared to other rock acts at the time, songs like Chop Suey and Aerials are still some of System's greatest, with Daron putting his Beatles fixation to good use with impressive melodic runs. For any band looking to expand their horizons as far as what your music can do, Toxicity is the definition of what something like alternative metal could look like.