System Of A Down: Every Album Ranked Worst To Best

Things really ended up taking a dark turn after System first tasted success with Toxicity. In the weeks and years that followed, America would find itself braving through 9/11, trying to reason with terrorists, and ultimately go to war under very questionable circumstances. If you thought that System were angry back in 2001, they had a real axe to grind once they got to Mezmerize.

Framing their album almost like a story, much of this record feels like witnessing the death of the American Dream, starting with the onslaught of riffs on BYOB. Aside from the more serious material, this is where System really start to branch out into much braver territory, with the song Question being their greatest mix of influences, from flamenco guitars to shifting time signatures left and right.

It doesn't forget the System enthusiast though, using everything from humor on Cigaro to frame war mongering as a d*ck measuring contest to essentially writing a eulogy for their generation on Sad Statue. Now that they were famous, there's also some great material mocking the dream of getting famous, with Lost in Hollywood sounding like a death march for someone that was chewed up by the fame machine and spit back out. Just like America as a whole, System showed that the surface might look pretty, but you might want to be careful when digging deeper.