But despite that lack of subtlety, “Prison Song” is far from deathly self-seriousness, as lines like “Nearly two million Americans are incarcerated in the prison system” are somehow able to coexist side by side with Daron Malakian proclaiming “I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch right here in Hollywood” in a Queen style theatrical vocal affection. When even Rage Against the Machine’s firmly anti-police “Killing in the Name” could be stripped for the adrenaline rush of its “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” refrain, System of a Down correctly ascertained they didn’t have room to be poetic. “All research and successful drug policy show that treatment should be increased/And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences,” goes the song’s proto-woke breakdown. Tankian needs you to know that America’s prison system was coming for you as much as it was coming for any “criminal”. The first verse begins “Following the rights movement, you clamped on with your iron fists / Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids.” This was not music to be misinterpreted.
The fake out opening of “Prison Song” sets you on edge, the gap of silence between the first DUN and the remaining seeming to grow every time you turn it on. Not only did America, and the rest of the world for that matter, need Toxicity they never stopped needing Toxicity. Add up the YouTube views for the music videos of those singles - each uploaded several years after the album’s release - and you reach an eye watering two billion and counting. Instead, Toxicity went triple platinum, each single peaking higher than the last. Here was a stridently political band releasing a heavy metal album exactly one week before an event so devastating that it was assumed it would annihilate America’s appetite for heavy metal and stridently political bands.
That other event is now inseparable from Toxicity’s legacy.
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