System of a down (or SOAD, for short) is an Armenian-American heavy metal band comprised of 4 silly goofy goobers that absolutely hate war.

Those are:

Serj “Proud Dad” Tankian, a trained tenor singer, sexy goober, lyricist, keyboardist, guitarist, poet, jack of all traits kinda guy. Has a supreme dad bod and his voice will probably make you shit, piss, cum or all at the same time. He sucked Daron’s toes once

Daron Malakian, goofy goober, second vocalist, lead guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and the guy that shares a single neuron with the rest of the band. He also got his toes sucked once.

Shavarsh Odadjian, silly goober, bassist, that’s it. He’s also credited with the musical of the film Babylon A.D. which I’ll never watch and probably neither will you. Doesn’t know that Serj sucked Daron’s toes

John Dolmayan, serious goober, drummer of multiple bands (I think). He’s the only down-to-earth member of the band as far as I know. Called out Serj once for sucking Daron’s toes

If you really need to know the history of these guys I suggest you check their Wikipedia page and leave me alone. Either way, apart from some demos and mishaps, these goobers would release a total of 5 albums + 2 singles through their entire musical career, which sounds pretty piss-poor until you realize that all of these are all bangers and that these guys are System Of A Down and not some losers from across the street or industry plants.  What you really need to take away from this is that these guys would make songs about war and how gay it is (in a derogatory manner, duh), politics, The Armenian Genocide of the 1900’s, and silly goofy shit that, even tho it has no meaning and not even the band has no idea what is it about, you can still pull tapeworms out of your mouth and claim that it has a meaning. All of their albums, to me, are all masterpieces, 10/10’s.

Speaking of which, here are my thoughts on each album.

#1 System Of A Down (self-titled debut) (1998)

John 1:51 “He then added, ‘Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on The Son of Man’”

This one is bananas, as it is a collage of fury in the shape of alt-rock, heavy metal and Armenian folk music reflecting the cultural background of these goofy goobers (you know, in good taste). It’s eclectic in nature, very diverse.

The songs on this album are absolute bangers (as they do). It’s a ballad of hate and rebellion, with it’s lyrics that go against religious corruption (“Suite-Pee” & “Know”), political corruption (“, fake power structures (“War?”), media brainwashing (“Spiders”), lethal side effects of drugz (“Sugar”), war, them three letter agencies, the Politically Lying, Unholy, Cowardly Killers (Turkish government) and the brain-less fucks (us) who do nothing about these said problems (“CUBErt”). But they are also encouragements for us to make our own rules, choose our existence (“Storage”), to smoke some fucking weed (“Peephole”). (plus, there’s a song, “Marmalade”, that’s just about fancy, fancy sex, but only in the Japanese version)

The music itself is varied, never repetitive, the songs being very distinguishable from one another, which is an ongoing

Thing within SOAD albums, trust me. From more somber melodies to hate fucking brigades of aggression driven into

the bass, guitar, drums and also Serj Tankian making Serj Tankian noises.

It’s a good fucking album, it’s the kind of album that will motivate you enough to make the fetus yours. It’s an outstanding work of artistry and skill, one that established these singular neuron sharing goofy goobers as unique bitches in the rock & metal scene with songs whose lyrics are more important than some of our lives, which laid the foundation for what it’s about to cum…

#2 Toxicity (2001)

“We can’t be neutral on a moving train” – Howard Zinn

Man, I don’t even have enough words to even describe this one. Hell, there will never be enough words in the dictionary of any language to describe how good this fucking album really is. Not only is it a GOOD product of it’s time, but it’s one that aged gracefully and stood the test of time (and the cultural impact of it too bro omfg). Like many iconic albums, there’s always a few good reasons as to why they are like this in the first place, but one of them will always be them juicy singles that always get played on the radios and cut their way into the subconsciousness of the mainstream media, in this case being the song “Chop-Suey!” (the name being an Americanized version of the Chinese quick dish ‘tsap sui”, the song was originally named “Self-righteous Suicide” but the producers we’re pussies that wanted to change it). It’s “a little quacky” song that can be interpreted however you like and it’s instantly iconic, like, whenever people hear it they will immediately identify it as a SOAD song (there’s also “Toxicity” but that I don’ care).

Speaking of songs that can be interpreted however you like, the songs here are about more or less the same thing except that they went even harder and more on the nose with this one, the opening track “Prison Song” starting off with a literal jumpscare as you sit down to listen to it, which then devolves into talking about the gay and garbage prison system of the USA which is garbage and gay. Also they delve in a little deeper into their eclectic nature in this one, basically expanding upon key aspects present in the first album while also expanding into new ones, like discussing in a very friendly and calm manner about how science has mostly ruined our world and how its affecting kids with ADD now (“Science” & “A.D.D” and even “Toxicity”), or the inclusion of Armenian folk influences at the very end (“Aerials”), or talking more about the cons of drug usage (“Needles”), fancier fancy sex (“Bounce”) and overall bringing in more cryptic lyrics that seemingly make no sense at first but you think they do but then you try to understand them, stay up all night because of it and then you realize that you overanalyzed a SOAD song as you try to comprehend the fact that you probably wasted time but you rationalize it by accepting the fact that you had, at the very least, a lot of fun in doing so AND got informed about important things so it’s probably not really a waste of time.

The songs themselves are an ass-fucking symphony of fiddly-doo’s (you can clearly tell that John was fucking the drums in this one), where clear levels of violence and aggression are clearly shown in the first half of the album and then it sorta deescalates in the second half and it becomes more dramatic.

I’m telling you, if you really want a good time, listen to this album instead of acting like a psycho, groupie, cocaine crazy that does nothing all day. At least with this one you can do nothing all day in the best way possible, especially if your torrenting music, which a lot of people still do, especially back in the day with services like “Limewire” and what not, which lead to the discovery of many demos and cut SOAD tracks that never saw the light of day. But what did the goofy goobers over at the SOAD do when they found out about this digital debauchery? They made a whole ass album about it.

That album being…

#3 Steal this Album!

“There’s no flag large enough to cover the shame of a man in cuffs” – Howard Zinn (again)

“Ball game’s in the refrigerator” – Chick Hern & Stu Lantz

“The internet sucks now” – an average Reddit user

This one’s a doozie, as this is just an unorganized, all over the place compilation of various different cut B-sides from the previous two albums, which these guys published because they didn’t really like the fact that people we’re torrenting music from the web and so we got this and they even wrote the title of this one as a little nod to Abbie Hoffman’s book “Steal This Book!”, which would then publish, get their money and then Boom! everyone was happy.

 In my opinion the first half of this album kinda sucks ngl, but the second half is where it gets juicy in this Bussy, where the songs become more chaotic and hectic enough to fuck ass and shit, like, the songs themselves are good, so good, they are still top notch, still really impactful, they still get their messages about why consumerism (“Chic ‘n Stu”), society (“Bubbles”), wars (“Boom!”), political corruption, police brutality (“Mr. Jack”), TV, Paul Tibbets (“Pictures”), The System ™(“Fuck the System”), love („Highway Song” & „Roulette”), suicide („Streamline”) and data harvesting („Thetawaves”) are all fucking gay. But the album itself still feels very wobbly. It usually feels like padding and in order to get into the good stuff you’ll have to dig into the second half in order to find The Good Shit™.

But yea, that’s it really, I think that this is their shittiest album yet, but if your album is just as bad as „Steal This Album!” then, my guy, it’s fine, not a problem.

#4 Mezmerize (2005)

„It's a non-stop disco, bet you it's Nabisco betcha didn't know, whoo-hoo” – Serj Tankian

Yeah, this is it, this is the stuff. This album, not only is it great, it is the great. It’s so well composed, written, pased that it surpasess it’s predecessor „Steal This Album!” in any way.

It starts calmly with some of that, sweet sweet foreshadowing (for the next album) and then progresses into of the the singles ever which then builds momentum based on that single, carries it throught the album until the end where Daron talks about how shit Hollywood is or something I don’t know, I don’t pay attention to the lyrics, but I do enough to understand that this album primarly talks about how gay it is to fight for a country that doesn’t care about you while the higher-ups reap all of the rewards, how much fun cocaine is whilst being very dangerous, how much Daron Malakian misses Danny and Lisa (who tf are Danny and Lisa???), how war corrups the very nature of humanity while freedoms are taken away, etc. It also brings fun facts such as how Nabisco, a cookie baking company, is financing porn on TV, betcha didn’t know that.

The songs, like I said, have that consistency that was build off of the first tracks which is being carried throught most of the album due to the seemless way the songs keep blending into one another while also sounding unique in their own right. Truly a musical masterpiece that should definitely be looked upon cause its short and sweet enough as to not cause diabetes.

Truly the album of all time, which is being directly continued by SOAD’s last album...

5# Hypnotize (2005)

„I’m a midnight fistfight” – Daron Malakian

This continuation of the previous album „Mezmerize” stands as the last remaining album of SOAD’s discography. While it has been fun, contrary to popular beliefs, good things don’t last forever. But at least they’ve had fun with this one, right? Well no, cause the bar was raised too high and despite financial success and critical acclaim worldwide, the goofy goobers couldn’t really keep up no more, they we’re stagnating, playing for SOAD wasn’t really fun anymore and despite the absolute sexy quality of these last two albums, there is a noticeable decline in quality in these two albums, even if you may not see it.

But despite all of that, I still think that this one is really good and you SHOULD listen to it. The songs themselves in this one are more or less a violent march against war and the people who play with it („Attack!”, „Dreaming”, „Soldier Side”), drugs (again) („Stealing Society”, „She’s like Heroin”) and various other things. Like that one time where Daron accidentaly ran over a rabbit and felt really bad about it which made him ride the track „Kill Rock ’n Rock”. Or that time where Serj wrote that track „Tentative” based on his personal experience of him actually witnessing bombings in Lebanon when he was a child, crazy shit. Or the track „ Hypnotize” which is about The Tianammen Square Massacre and how the media portrayed it, or the Mount Arahat in Armenia („Holy Mountains”) and overall just fucking around in some songs, like „Vicinity of Obscenity” and „U-fig”.

As always, the music was good, but the funny thing is that for this one Daron Malakian had to play the bass in most of his songs as Shavarsh was becoming so ass at playing the bass that he was playing the guitar better. Shavarsh is a bass player who is better at playing the guitar, like, wtf bro. Daran also did a lot of singing for this one which is great, especially if you really like his tone of voice akin to a little bitch.

But yeah, that it pretty much, the album ends on a full version of the track „Soldier Side” which was teased in the previous album „Mezmorize”. Well, not really teased as Mezmorize & Hypnotize are, like, both halves of a BIG album, which is superb (even the CD cases prove that).

After this one, the band would go on a hiatus of sorts, but Daron hates that word so we will call it a „divorce”. Nothing really bad happened in between these guys, motherfuckers are best friends, their separation wasn’t some petty discourse because Serj didn’t like the fact that John exposed him for sucking Daron toes or shit like it. It was due to creative differences which resulted in them splitting apart, each member going on to pursue their own things, to take care of their own families and to ocasionally hang out if they could.

That’s pretty much it

Ok, not, really, there are only two more singles we need to talk about...

Protect The land & Genocidal Humanoidz (2020)

These are their newest singles made and released in response to the second Nagorno-Karabakh War which involved Azerbaijan, Armenia and Artsakh, a little conflict which lasted for 44 days and through these songs funds we’re raised to fund support for the Armenians. These songs we’re meant for the next Scars on Broadway album, but they’ve released them under the SOAD name because it was easier and it was in brand.

These songs too are really great. „Genocidal Humanoidz” is a juicy & fast, hectic track about fighting the devil. „Protect The Land” as a way to present the war and terrorism happening at the time.

And that’s it

Here’s their website

Their Youtube

And Bandcamp