Review: "Steal This Album!" by American Nu-Metal Band System of a Down

The next album to be reviewed and analyzed is the album called Steal This Album! That is the third album by the nu-metal and rock band System of a Down. System of a Down is categorized as nu-metal but if you look at it from the big picture, that's just a categorization. So how good is the album called Steal This Album?

1. Chic ‘N’ Stu
2. Innervision
3. Bubbles
4. Boom!
5. Nuguns
6. A.D.D. (American Dream Denial)
7. Mr. Jack
8. I-E-A-I-A-I-O
9. 36
10. Pictures
11. Highway Son
12. **** the System
13. Ego Brain
14. Theta waves
15. Roulette
16. Streamline

We revisit this 2002 album on a night where being grateful has been a bit of a challenge, so let’s take a look at Steal This Album!

The first four lines of the opening song should be a clue to those of us that grew up in the 1980’s. Those are things that the late Chick Hearn would say when the Los Angeles Lakers had a game all but wrapped up. The song is actually about the powerful effects of advertising. Advertising encourages us to keep on buying things but advertising can also be very detrimental to our lives as well. Innervision is about people embarking on a search for their life’s meaning and purpose. Worded another way, this is the realization of the person’s inner vision. Bubbles is the first really awesome song on the album. This really heavy song along with the melody of the vocals make this short song a classic! The next song is called Boom! This song is about all the various social problems in the world including the effects of dropping bombs on innocent populations. As the song clearly states, it is all about the money as wars are started by countries for the purpose of achieving their own political goals. It is the innocent civilians of these countries that suffer the most. The next song A.D.D. is written to raise awareness of the decline of the American Dream. For many years, corporations have become motivated by greed and profits have started to matter more than people.

Of course when the review of this album began in early 2017, I was in a different place mentally but times have changed obviously. Listening to Steal This Album, you get the sense that this album is different from Toxicity in the sense that it is not the same drawn out nu-metal kind of stuff that we have been used to hearing from these guys and that’s a good thing. You have songs like Bubbles and Pictures and then the first song in this album can really capture your attention.

If System of Down’s music has the power and influence to encourage people to start trying to become their own boss, then the band has done a pretty good job. Music has the power to heal certain emotions and it can also encourage us to take certain actions in our life that will lead us to better places. The next song has a weird title and it is fast with some chanting style vocals. This is one of the weakest songs in the career of System of a Down.

After a really terrible song called "36," the band really redeems themselves with the fast song Pictures as Serj chants “I got pictures on my mind” incessantly but this is what makes the song better instead of making it worse. **** The System is an antiwar kind of song. Peace is always better than war but most of you are aware of this. "Theta Waves" shows more of the band’s melodic vocals which makes this another outstanding song to listen to. The final score as of this writing would probably be an 82 out of 100 points for the third album by System of a Down.