System Of A Down is one of those bands that has a near-universal appeal and everyone, whether they want to admit it or not, has gone through a System Of A Down phase. Here’s what I learned during mine, which lasted from age 12 to, well, now.
5. Steal This Album! (2002)
You know those TikTok videos where some guy is like “here’s how to write a [band] song in 30 seconds!” and then just kind of generically breaks down each element of a song by said band? That’s what “Steal This Album!” feels like to me. It’s algorithmically generated System Of A Down. It’s by no means bad, but especially considering it came out only a year after “Toxicity,” it just falls flat. With the exception of the mesmerizing “Roulette” and the whiplash between nonsensical and gorgeous in “I-E-A-I-A-I-O,” it’s just like, a fine album.
It does the job. It’s fine, guys. Don’t hurt me please.
Play it again: “I-E-A-I-A-I-O”
Skip it: “Ego Brain”
4. System Of A Down (1998)
As far as a fairly unpolished debut goes, SOAD’s self-titled album goes pretty damn hard. It feels like them at their most distressingly manic, and gives the listener a little taste of what’s to come. It also contains some of the best unhinged Serj vocalizations to scare your mom with. That being said, some tracks can feel repetitive or under-written, which isn’t a deal-breaker, but means that I don’t wind up revisiting this one often. This album is growing on me, though, particularly due to the borderline slap bass that appears from time to time.
Bonus points go, predictably, to “Sugar” for foregoing standard song structure completely and becoming enthrallingly weird and endlessly memeable as a result.
Play it again: “Sugar”
Skip it: “CUBErt”
3. Hypnotize (2005)
While this album undoubtedly has some of the smash hits of this era of SOAD, I can’t help but feel like it lacks a little cohesiveness. And (spoilers) compared to its predecessor, the non-radio tracks tend to blend together more. Maybe that’s the downside of a double album released a few months apart; the first one is always going to hit a bit harder. However, some of my fave standalone songs are on this album, including the often overlooked “Tentative.” And “Vicinity of Obscenity” is like, peak Dada-ist Serj lyricism that remains untouchable. I will yell TERRA COTTA PIE HEY whenever I can. Which isn’t often, but I’m working on it.
Also, “selling ass for heroin” ranks #1 for “lines I should not have been singing along to while listening to this on my mp3 player when I was 13.”
Play it again: “Lonely Day”
Skip it: “Attack”
2. Mezmerize (2005)
I’m going to be perfectly honest: this is my favorite SOAD album and I almost put it at number 1, but after thinking long and hard about it, I realized that I had to be objective about this. Every track on this brings a little something different to the table, and yet it still sounds like it came from the same session. “B.Y.O.B.” is obviously killer, and major kudos to “Radio/Video” for managing to make psuedo-klesmer sound cool. Even some of the lesser known tracks like “Old School Hollywood” utterly fuck, and I’m not just saying that because I really like talkbox vocals, even though that is true and should not discredit me and has nothing to do with the embarrassing results of my Spotify Wrapped.
Play it again: “B.Y.O.B.,” “Cigaro,” “Radio/Video,” “Question!”
Skip it: “Lost in Hollywood”
1. Toxicity (2001)
Ah, yes. The album that got everyone and their cousins who smoke K2 into SOAD. And for good reason–I kind of can’t believe this is only their second album, considering how sprawling and experimental it is. And yet each seemingly discordant piece fits together into a captivating puzzle of a whole. It makes a lot of sense that three of their top five songs on Spotify are from “Toxicity.” It manages mainstream appeal while remaining interesting and unpredictable.
There are honestly just too many good tracks to even call out here. It’s an iconic album for a reason and genuinely lacks weak spots. The lowest I’ll give any single song from this is like, a C. Which is better than most nu-metal ever gets at its very best.
Play it again: All the hits, play them on repeat
Skip it: “Science”
For the official Hard Times take on the Machine Gun Kelly cover of “Aerials,” click here.
Read more rankings of your favorite bands
I’ll be honest, I completely forgot that this record exists. I mean, it has some good songs on it – like, it’s not a bad album overall. It’s just kind of forgettable, especially when you put it up against more developed AJJ records. But in any case, you can thank this review for reminding you as well that “Can’t Maintain” is a thing which you can still listen to.
“Knife Man” probably shouldn’t be this low on the list, but this band has a lot of really great albums and also a couple dumb albums that I mostly need to use as examples for other shit. So there you have – good record, shit ranking.
Look, I know, I know. There’s a lot from this record that does not hold up. And yeah, I’m sure I’m gonna get a whole assload of comments about how they “could never make this record nowadays.” Which is kinda my point. Sometimes you gotta start out writing funny songs about a serial lady killer before you can work your way into that grand concept record about the alien who has a coke problem, or whatever your thing is.
We all had to figure out how to cope with Trump’s presidency in our own ways. This record was AJJ’s. It is also one of the weirder albums in AJJ’s discography, which is really saying something when you take into account that the band actually made and sold salad gloves as merch.
Anybody else listen to this record for the first time and immediately think “you know what, I did have a pretty fucked up childhood. How about that?” Yeah, “The Bible 2” is great for that. Just try listening to it at home first, because if you play it while driving your car on the way to get it inspected then everyone at Jiffy Lube is gonna wonder why you’re crying so much.
Much like the actual Christmas Island, which hosts an annual migration of tens of millions of red crabs to sea to spawn, this album requires no explanation as to its greatness. “Christmas Island” (the album, not the island) is a sonic landmass that is being swarmed by crustaceans. Can you hear it? It sounds clackity.
If you put Woody Guthrie, Barbara Streisand and Simon & Garfunkel in a blender you would likely end up with exactly this album. That’s not a metaphor by the way – if you took an actual blender and mutilated those three artists and also Garfunkel then the resulting viscera would equate to this album. Brutal, catchy, and with a heavy flavor of Marlboro Lights, this is the best AJJ album of all time.
