“Toxicity” by System of a Down

"Toxicity" is the title track of System of a Down's second album, and when the Armenian-American band put it out as the album's second single in 2002 it sounded like nothing else on rock radio. Daron Malakian and Shavo Odadjian wrote the music, Serj Tankian wrote the words, and Malakian produced it with Rick Rubin, with Tankian as co-producer.

It's a lesson in controlled chaos. The song mostly lives in triple meter, lurching between 6/4, 12/8 and 4/4, with Malakian's guitar counting out the verse in twos before the heavy section flips it into groups of three while John Dolmayan's drums refuse to follow, a rhythmic tug-of-war that keeps the whole thing off balance. Odadjian's bass rumbles underneath, Tankian adds keyboards, and the vocals swing from eerie croon to full-throated bark, with Malakian and Tankian trading lines and Odadjian chiming in. That chorus, all dynamics and fury, lands like a door kicked off its hinges, and Dolmayan's drum pattern is the song's spine.

Andy Wallace mixed it, David Schiffman engineered it, and American Recordings released it. VH1 placed it at number 14 on its list of the 40 greatest metal songs, and Stylus Magazine hailed it as a nu metal classic.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.