Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#11 Missy Elliott, MISS E... SO ADDICTIVE

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vs.

#22 System of a Down, TOXICITY

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [[email protected]] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for TOXICITY, and it’s from @2006dvdrip.bsky.social. Take it away, New-Wave Carrie White!

There's a lot more to TOXICITY than just its sharp political edge - songs like the dynamic ATWA show a sensitive and emotionally affecting side to their music with its soft, clean guitar-led verses offset by a heavy chorus with harsh vocals. This song is, of course, an homage to guitarist Daron Malakian's interest in Charles Manson and the latter's "Air, Trees, Water, Animals" philosophy, but the less said about that the better to make my case probably.

I read an interview with either Daron or Serj Tankian where one of them said they included songs like "Bounce" to emphasize the absurd and unpredictable nature of life,
stating that their music couldn't be serious all the time if life wasn't. It's also a banger as most of their shorter songs are. The best songs on TOXICITY, like the four
chord rager "Shimmy," seem to tread the line somewhere between by confronting serious subjects in a deceptively silly manner. There are a number of songs on this
album that I really could only hazard a guess about the meaning of beyond a line or two.

At the time this album came out, I had been getting into bands like Limp Bizkit, Korn, Rob Zombie, Powerman5000, whatever rap was popular on the radio or in movie
soundtracks at the time. Hearing "Chop Suey" on the radio for the first time was a mind-blowing experience, an instance where I can definitely remember where I was
and what I was doing. It's a big anthem that builds up to a major final chorus when the pianos come in. The album pretty quickly became a singular obsession for me
and the people I knew, to the point that I didn't really see the appeal in almost anything else I listened to from that scene and eventually had to re-evaluate my tastes
more towards older stuff like thrash and grunge.

The political impact of this album is probaby easier to write off if you were in college at the time working for a record store, but as a nine year old listening to whatever was in guitar magazines or on the rock radio stations in the recent aftermath of 9/11, System Of A Down's interview's and lyrical messages confronting police brutality, mass incarceration, the Armenian Genocide and other issues would have been just about the only thing in me and my friend's media diet bringing us these kinds of ideas, as I never really took a liking to punk in general. Nearly every song on this album was the topic of debate over its possible meaning and implication. Their music continued to appeal to me as Bush ordered the country into two retaliarory wars and an era of mass surveillance, torture, lies. The other bands from the era fell off for the most part or became more commercial to stay relevant, while I had a fairly limited interest in Chevelle, Brand New, Yellowcard, or the indie and garage rock scenes at the time.

Daron Malakian is a unique guitarist, whose Drop C staccato style is steeped in the less-is-more style of their nü-metal contemporaries, but uses uncommon modes like Phrygian in "Forest," and an array of acoustic instruments like sitar and banjo. The hidden bonus track on this album, "Arto," is named after Armenian folk musician Arto Sedraki Tunçboyacıyan, who contributes to the track. Vocalist Serj Tankian has a collaborative project, Serart, with Arto.

"Forest" is a crushing and emotional banger, one of the most serious arguments for how great this album and band is. After that it's dropping "Science," "Shimmy," and
then the title track. "Psycho" has a killer guitar solo, then the big single "Aerials," Bonus track, out.

Thank you, New-Wave Carrie White!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #6 Radiohead, AMNESIAC defeated #27 Cannibal Ox, THE COLD VEIN, 131-90-2.

Thanks,

Kent