It's been nearly two decades since they released a new album and with nothing in sight, System of a Down must be one of the most frustrating bands to follow, but still, fans clearly continue to enjoy their music.

Today, we review one of the most unexpected success story of all-time, a band that has demonstrated how you can make it big, while remaining true to yourself and offering no concessions.

Looking at the big picture: System of a Down

A very long road... just to get started

As absurd as it sounds, the history of System of a Down really starts in the early 1900s, when the Ottoman Empire was shrinking both militarily and economically. In an effort to prevent further decline, the government decided that targeting and exterminating people's of certain ethnicities and religions, that existed throughout the Empire, would solve their problems. This led to more than 2m Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, being murdered in the 1910s. Ultimately though, their plan failed and The Ottoman Empire vanished completely in 1922, being replaced by the Republic of Turkey.

Some of those targeted managed to flee to other countries, leading to a significant diaspora in several places, especially in the American state of California. Many others who had originally settled in places like Lebanon and Iraq, would also end up in America, later in the decade, due instability in these regions.

Throughout the decades, the Armenian community continued to evolve, to the point where an Armenian neighbourhood, Little Armenia, was created in the city of Los Angeles. Located within this area, is the K-12, Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian School, where both history and religion lessons are given in the Armenian language.

Serj Tankian, who would become System of a Down's lead singer and keyboardist, was a pupil when the school was in it's early years of existence, but had left by the time that Daron Malakian (guitar and vocals), Shavo Odadjian (bass and backing vocals) and Andy Khachaturian (drums) had enrolled.

Almost inevitably, in pursuing their musical dreams, these young men, of a similar background, living in the same area and with a love music, would meet. Serj, Daron and Shavo would end up meeting in 1992 and go on to create the band Soil, with Andy joining them in a new project, in 1994, called System of a Down. While building their reputation with live shows in nightclubs and sending out demo tapes, the legendary producer Rick Rubin discovered them and called them his favourite band, at that time. While he loved the group, he wasn't expecting much commercial success. As he said, "no one was waiting for an Armenian heavy metal band. It had to be so good that it transcended all of that".

The mastermind behind the explosion of rap (Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, Kanye West), the evolution of rock and metal, in more recent decades (Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park) and with monster pop smashes (Justin Timberlake, Adele, Ed Sheeran), he's certainly clued up on what is popular and what sells and decided to give them a chance, signing System of a Down to his Columbia Records label in 1997. At this point, John Dolmayan replaced Khachaturian as the drummer, who broke every bone in his hand, after punching a wall, while practising martial arts.

The recording years

After years in the making, the group had plenty of material ready to record for their debut album. In June 1998, it all came to fruition and their self-titled first album was released. It was a moderate success, selling 800,000 copies after a couple of years, with both singles Sugar and Spiders reaching the US Top 40 Alternative Airplay chart. The album was closed by the politically charged song P.L.U.C.K., an acronym which stands for Politically Lying, Unholy, Cowardly Killers.

The fall of the 90s saw nu metal music explode. The genre, a fusion of metal with hip hop elements, topped charts with artists like Korn, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, and of course, Linkin Park. System of a Down would go on to create their own very unique and complex sound, with Serj Tankian mastering the art of sing-rap and delivering some highly charged and powerful lyrics.

Being over 30 years old, when their debut was released, the singer was obviously quite a bit older than fellow metal singers and brought perhaps more intelligent and thoughtful lyrics into the genre, as well as influences that ranged from Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden to trash metal legends Slayer and Metallica.

The fast paced, high energy tunes, briliant melodies, thoughtful lyrics, stripped down riffs, impeccable singing and rapping, all came together to perfection on their sophomore album, 2001's Toxicity. While their reputation was strong in the metal scene, their debut had only managed to peak at #113, with no impact overseas.

In the blink of aye, everything changed. Toxicity debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. This obviously gave them and the album considerable media exposure, especially since it led the chart in the week of 9/11. The lead single, Chop Suey!, which refers to suicide, was listed among tracks to keep off airwaves following the event.

The title track and Aerials were similar hits, reaching top 5 on rock airplay stations but without climbing to the top 50 of the Hot 100. They weren't and never really became mainstream though.

Steal This Album! arrived just a year later. It was seen as a disappointment due to its low peak in the US (#15) and the lack of hit singles. Obviously contributing to the downturn, was the fact that the album, in demo form, had leaked online many months earlier. It was also released during the busy Christmas period, when numbers all round are far higher and healthier.

They returned in 2005 with a duo of albums issued 6-months apart: Mezmerize and Hypnotize. Both topped the US album charts, making them the first band to have two #1 studio albums in the same calendar year, since Led Zeppelin in 1970, who hit the top with II and III. Their success overseas also grew considerably. Their singles B.Y.O.B. and Question! from the first album and Hypnotize and Lonely Day from the second, were all very well received, the former giving them their first Grammy, for Best Hard Rock Performance.

The tour de force of releasing two successful albums in a year was even more impressive considering Daron Malakian largely took over the song writing duties for these records, while also sharing lead vocals with Serj Tankian.

Hiatus' hiatus

In May 2006, with the Mezmerize/Hypnotize Tour going strong, the band announced they were going on hiatus. They did reunite in 2011, to perform a string of European festivals and then various tours and shows. New music though, has never arrived though.

For almost 10 years, the members have chopped and changed their minds on a new studio album. In reality, they just seem to have different interests nowadays. Serj Tankian embarked on a solo career. Daron Malakian formed his own band, Scars on Broadway, which John Dolmayan joined as well. Shavo Odadjian participated in many projects and now operates as a DJ from time to time.

Back in 2006, they started their hiatus with the release of a documentary film called Screamers. This was to raise awareness about the Armenian genocide, at the hands of the Turkish, in the early 20th century. A genocide which in 2024, is still denied by the Turkish authorities.

Although on a hiatus, these political issues are an intrinsic part of every member and to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the genocide, they got together for the Wake Up the Souls Tour, in 2015. In 2020, they issued their only 2 new recordings in nearly two decades, Protect the Land and Genocidal Humanoidz.

These tracks gave their fans hope of a return to the studio but they were actually Scars on Broadway songs, issued as a one-off to raise money for the Armenia Fund, as the country faced the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

While a new studio album is very unlikely at this stage, the group is still very popular, outdoing most 90s/00s metal bands on streaming platforms, including several which were bigger back in the day.

Chop Suey! made headlines for hitting 1 billion views on YouTube and then again for 1 billion streams on Spotify. As we are going to see, their entire catalogue is going strong.

System of a Down album sales

Updated studio album sales & comments

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System of a Down reached Gold (500,000) RIAA certification, in 19 months, in the US and two more years to hit Platinum, on the heels of Toxicity success. Its success elsewhere was close to nil.

At 3.5 million pure sales, it shows just how well it has performed since 2001. At around 3 million sales we also see Steal This Album! and the Mezmerize / Hypnotize duo, which highlights how many fans they have. These people collected their entire discography.

Then, obviously, the front runner is Toxicity. A success from day one, it made the band a global phenomenon. Its classic status enables it to continue selling year in year out. It's closing in 9 million sales.

Want to compare the act's albums with others?

System of a Down songs sales

Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.

Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, they are rewarded with 100% of these units. However, featured acts share a 50% piece of the total.

Physical singles

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Metal bands rarely go for singles formats, except some collectors items. It is no different for System of a Down. Singles from Toxicity sold a bit, in good part thanks to top 40 performances in the UK. Numbers remain low though, with the top songs below 100,000 sales.

Digital songs

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Digital sales were barely getting started when the band called it a day in 2006, so even their 2005 songs sold a good share of their units as legacy titles.

Chop Suey! leads the way with 3.2 million sales. B.Y.O.B. isn't too far away at 2.7 million, with a few more millionaires such as Toxicity, Lonely Day, Aerials, and Hypnotize.

With a catalogue made up of only 77 tracks, they moved over 18 million digital units overall.

Streaming

Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 100 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * Spotify market shares based on artists' market distribution

Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms

*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.

Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit

Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * ArtistRatio + Genie * 2.20 + AWA * 100 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750

Top hits

The general feel from these numbers is that they belong to a current band. Their top 5 are very strong, with songs combining for almost 5 million equivalent album sales.

To give these results some perspective, with 4 songs from the 2000s over 500 million streams, they are put just behind Coldplay (6), Rihanna (6), Beyonce (5) or Britney Spears (4) and doing better than U2 (1) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (3).

The weaker albums also contain standout tracks. Sugar is up to 255 million on Spotify, while I-E-A-I-A-I-O tops 100 million.

Another highlight comes from Mezmerize. If Toxicity claims the strongest top 3, the 2005 albums contains a stunning 6 tracks over 100 million streams. Only 2 of them were issued as singles, showing how strong the album is overall.

The band is now up to 10 million equivalent album sales from streams, a stunning total off such a tiny discography.

Full catalog breakdown

If you are familiar with the artist's catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.

Keep yourself up to date

Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetches updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!

System of a Down compilations sales

Raw compilations sales

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System of a Down have no compilations or live albums so far. All their releases outside of their proper studio albums are box sets containing several of them merged or EPs.

Re-assigned compilation sales – Results & comments

Bonus: Total album (all types) sales per country

Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.

System of a Down: career results (CSPC)

Albums results (CSPC)

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Toxicity is now on its way to break the 15 million mark. I guess, after all, the demand was there for an Armenian heavy metal band. The album belongs to the very stop sellers of 2001, challenging records from the biggest pop stars.

Mezmerize comes second with 7 million sales, while the remaining 3 discs moved 4+ million copies apiece.

With one pre-fame album, another massively leaked online and a pair of albums issued as part of the same promotional effort, System of a Down really had only 2 proper eras from a commercial point of view. The total of almost 36 million equivalent album sales to date impresses all the most.

As their worst performing album on streams is approaching a million, their career tally will keep going up very fast.

Singles results (CSPC)

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Want to compare the act's songs with other top hits?

Discography results (ASR)

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Records & achievements

• At 14,562,000, Toxicity is the 5th best selling album from 2001
• At 3.40 billion, Toxicity is the most streamed album from 2001
• At 1.51 billion, Mezmerize is the 11th most streamed album from 2005
• At 1.27 billion, Hypnotize is the 15th most streamed album from 2005

Dynamic Spotify key performance indicators

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As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs, Billboard.

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