Whoa. The last time I wrote about a song of System of a Down’s was eight years ago, one which marked the beginning of a bit of an hiatus on here while I interned at a music magazine for a year and completed my degree at university for another. According to my links, I’ve written about four (including ‘Hypnotize’) other songs of the band’s on here. While pre-hiatus me was very much into them, the person writing to you now isn’t as much. As much as SOAD songs can be some of the most twisting/turning, zany and intriguing pieces of music you’ll ever hear, they can tire you out hearing them over and over again. Well, at least that’s my case. There’ll be millions of you who’ll completely disagree with that statement. And that’s fine. Not to say that my musical tastes have evolved or matured ’cause there will be times when those four songs pop into my head and I’ll just start singing/vocalizing them out loud. Let’s just say if I was to start this whole thing all over again, those four songs probably wouldn’t be featured.

But. But, but, but. I’ve got a lot of love for ‘Prison Song’ right here, the opener to SOAD’s classic Toxicity album from 2001. A monster of a record. I once heard ‘Prison Song’ many, many years ago on the Yahoo! Launch internet radio service. Wanna say that was around 2005 or something. But I never got ’round to listening to Toxicity in full until about 2014, better later than never. And when I did, it was pretty much like hearing the song virtually for the first time. I, maybe like you, was also left wondering whether that very first short, sharp stab of a chord was my computer freezing right at the beginning of the song. But no, it was most likely the band messing with us into thinking that’s what happened. The band start and stop, cymbals crashing with each stomp of a guitar chord, after which each rest is filled with Serj Tankian creepily whispering “They trying to build a prison” into our ears. The song proper gets underway after the teases, and what follows is a critique of, well, the prison system of the United States. Its high incarceration rate, the war on drugs… two subjects touched upon here via a well-executed mix of strong melody and face-screwing inhale growls and screaming.

What I really appreciate on the track, and throughout the album really, is the back and forth going on between Serj Tankian and guitarist/songwriter Daron Malakian. The verses have the former delivering motor-mouth couplets for the first four measures before handing over to Malakian to deliver the “My crack, my smack, my bitch…” line (not “I smack my bitch”, by the way), alternating again to Tankian who again delivers a straight fact about the prison system of the country and finishing with Malakian growling “They tryna build a prison”, which again transitions into the chorus where Tankian repeats that phrase but powerfully yelling it at the top of his lungs. It’s a dynamic that’s not so much push and pull, but more turns you to face one person with the other waiting for their turn to grab you by the shoulders forcefully to make you face their direction. That never really lets up until the breakdown where the rhythm’s allowed to ride for a bit and I think the moment written for the audience in mind to jump to the beat before the fast pace kicks in again for the final pre-chorus and chorus. What a way to get an album started. I don’t know what it was like for a SOAD fan to wait for those three years between the band’s debut and Toxicity, but with the way ‘Prison Song’ starts the proceedings, it must have felt like they never left.