System Of a Down’s ‘Toxicity’ Video Hits One Billion YouTube Views

The video for System of a Down‘s 2002 heavy metal math rock anthem “Toxicity” has hit one billion views on YouTube. The second single from SOAD’s second album finds the band best known for their embrace of urgent, tricky-time signatures raging against the machine; it is their second visual to reach the billie mark, following the clip for the album’s equally neck-snapping single “Chop Suey!”

The “Toxicity” video — co-directed by Marcos Siega (311, Weezer) and bassist Shavo Odadjian — opens with crackly footage of the Hollywood Walk of Fame before cutting to an all-white soundstage, where Odadjian, singer Serj Tankian, guitarist Daron Malakian and drummer John Dolmayan rip it up.

The lighting switches up as Tankian croons the first verse, “Conversion, software version 7.0/ Looking at life through the eyes of a tire hub/ Eating seeds as a pastime activity/ The toxicity of our city, of our city,” with a swirl of lights brightening the now-black soundstage along with stock footage of unhoused people on the streets of L.A. projected on the musicians’ bodies before all hell breaks loose on the chorus.

“You, what do you own the world?/ How do you own disorder? Disorder!” Tankian shouts over a pummeling attack as the camera swings wildly between the band members. As the track revs up its metal jazz breakdown near the end, the stage fills with an ocean of moshers stomping around and pumping their fists.

The nu-metal classic topped out at No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in May 2002 and No. 7 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart.

The band is gearing up for a series of North American and South American Wake Up! stadium shows, slated to kick off on April 24 in Bogota, Colombia before landing back in the U.S. on August 27 for the first of a two shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ with special guests Korn.

Watch the “Toxicity” video below.”