System of a Down

Fact Sheet

Country

USA

System of a Down is a Heavy Metal/Eclectic Metal band from Los Angeles. All four members are of Armenian ancestry, and some of their songs are about Armenian history and politics. Their diverse instrumentals range from baritone electric guitars, electric mandolins, sitars, 12-string classical guitars to many other east asian instruments. Their main influence is noticebly the heavy metal veterans known as Black Sabbath, but they have many other musical influences such as jazz, fusion, Armenian folk music, classic rock, blues and industrial metal.

Though System of a Down is commonly refered to as a "nu metal" they do not really fit in this category, with the exception of their down-tuned guitars. System of a Down have never incorperated rapping or turntables in their songs, and they do include solos in some of their songs. Guitarist Daron Malakian personally said to Guitar World that he was glad that System of a Down had not slipped into that subgenre of heavy metal.

The band enjoyed moderate success with their first singles, "Sugar" and "Spiders", but their first big hit was the controversial "Chop Suey!", released in the late summer of 2001. System of a Down received constant airplay throughout late 2001 and 2002 with their hits, "Chop Suey!", "Toxicity", "Aerials", and "Innervision".

Their third album, containing songs from the Toxicity recording session, was released as "Steal This Album!" because early recordings of most of the songs leaked out onto the Internet. There are four different designs of the album are available. One version of the CD resembles a CD Recordable that was labeled with a felt tip marker.

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