Although they were often lumped in with the turn-of-the-millennium "nu-metal" crowd, System of a Down has always been up to its own thing and its own thing alone. Which was why it was pretty cool indeed when the band's second album, Toxicity, surprised everyone by debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard chart upon release in September of 2001.

Metal audiences don't get credit for having more open ears than most, but the fact that this blistering slab of politically charged, dizzyingly technical strangeness has since moved close to 10 million copies worldwide is proof positive indeed they do. Toxicity is an utterly manic piece of work that grabs you by the throat with "Prison Song" and doesn't let go until the creepy "Aerials" and "Arto" -- a track that, in typically uncompromising System of a Down fashion, invites Armenian-American avant-gardist Arto Tuncboyaciyan along for the ride -- wind things down a breathless 44 minutes later. No one's ever bothered to try to duplicate it because, frankly, how could they?

TRACKLISTING:

1. Prison Song
2. Needles
3. Deer Dance
4. Jet Pilot
5. X
6. Chop Suey!
7. Bounce 
8. Forest
9. ATWA
10. Science
11. Shimmy
12. Toxicity
13. Psycho
14. Aerials