Toxicity

"Toxicity" is the title track and the closest System Of A Down came to writing something majestic. Where much of the album is convulsive, this one settles into a mid-tempo drop-D churn that lets Daron Malakian's riff breathe, and John Dolmayan's drumming — a shuffling, almost tribal pattern under the verses — gives it a swing that heavy music rarely allows itself. The build into the chorus is patient, and when Serj Tankian sings "disorder, disorder, disorder" the harmony stacks turn agitation into something anthemic. His vocal moves from a low, conspiratorial murmur to a full-throated cry without the cartoon extremes he deploys elsewhere. Lyrically it's a sweeping indictment of Los Angeles and by extension modern urban life — "eating seeds as a pastime activity," the "kandy" imagery, the endlessly quoted "somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep" — less a coherent argument than a montage of a civilization mid-collapse. The outro, with its droning guitar and Tankian's repeated question about where the angels are, dissolves rather than concludes. It's the SOAD song you put on driving at night through a city you resent and can't leave, and it holds up as one of the decade's most durable metal singles.