Universal Pictures clearly didn’t look beyond the surface level of this dizzying track, which they incorporated into their animated 3-D comedy (and its corresponding soundtrack). “Unannounced Twister games, all players with no names/They lined up, double quick, but just one pogo stick,” Tankian belts on “Bounce.” “Everyone gets to play, runaway, exposé/It was so exotic, but just one pogo stick.” Despite its blatant orgy references, the blitzing “Bounce” was used in the family-friendly animated film The Secret Life of Pets.
On this record, there’s 12 tracks on each song.”Ĥ. On the last record, there were two tracks of guitars. “There are just certain things that I thought could have been better from the last record … I knew what I wanted to do with the guitars to make it more furious. “I know what I’m doing,” he told MTV before the release. Serj Tankian on 'Personal' Film Soundtrack, State of System of a Down We were at my house doing the vocals and working on the idea, and I remember the idea of the father happening and then us trying to make it biblical in that way.
In a 2015 Genius annotation for the title track (though most likely referring to the album’s other signature song, “Chop Suey!”), the Zen master explained: “Serj didn’t have words for the bridge. Rubin ate up the absurdity, helping to foster the band’s unorthodox approach. Producer Rick Rubin offered the band crucial feedback on their reliably demented lyrics – even though he had no idea what they meant.įrom “wired were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot” to “pull the tapeworm out of your ass,” Tankian and Malakian crafted some of the most vividly perplexing lyrics in rock history on Toxicity. “As shown from yesterday’s events, you cannot stop a person who’s ready to die.”Ģ. “If we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, we’d be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation,” he wrote. It probably didn’t help that “Chop Suey!” – originally titled “Suicide” – includes the line “I cry when angels deserve to die.” (Granted, that list also included seemingly mild, inoffensive choices like Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” and Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.”)Īfter the attack, Tankian published an essay exploring 9/11’s fallout from multiple angles. As the album skyrocketed up the Billboard chart, selling 222,000 copies in its first week, its politically-oriented material was analyzed in a new light after 9/11, and Clear Channel placed the song on its list of songs with potentially “questionable” lyrics. System achieved their commercial triumph during one of the most painful and precarious months in American history. The album was released a week before 9/11 and topped the Billboard 200 the week of the tragedy. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, here are some lesser-known facts about the singular Toxicity.ġ. “Those are the artists that I like the best.” “They clearly didn’t fit, but they were so good that they transcended not fitting,” Rubin told the BBC in 2014, summarizing the band’s – and album’s – importance. System continued to evolve across their next three LPs, but Toxicity – which Rolling Stone ranked the 57th Best Album of the 2000s – remains their masterstroke.
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