TOXICITY

This is System of a Down's follow-up to their hit 1998 self-titled debut. Rick Rubin produced the 14-track effort. Cast in layers upon layers of aural intricacy, Toxicity charters new frontiers, yet it’s still grinding rock at its most deafening. It serve up some surprising melodies on Chop Suey!, Forest and the haunting Aerials.

SOAD’s second album is a profoundly wilder ride than their self-titled debut. Sonically, they stuffed nu-metal groove, death-metal blasts, paranoid dance beats, and traditional European folk into a cannon and promptly shot it point-blank at a brick wall. Atop that, they howled out heady critiques of the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex, while many of their peers just wanted to break stuff. A conscious-expanding masterpiece to this day.