System Of A Down - Steal This Album

One of the most defiantly creative albums of the early 2000s, and one with a backstory as wild as the music itself. When unfinished recordings from the Toxicity sessions leaked online in early 2002 under the bootleg title Toxicity II, System of a Down refused to let their work be heard incomplete. Instead, Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian, and John Dolmayan polished the material off, wrapped it in deliberately bootleg-inspired packaging, named it Steal This Album! in a nod to political activist Abbie Hoffman, and released it on their own terms.

The result is anything but a collection of leftovers. Produced by Rick Rubin and Daron Malakian and peaking at number 15 on the Billboard 200, the album is a 16-track blast of the band's wildly original vision, what Rolling Stone called "an absurdist blast of political rage, silly theater and shattered math metal." Both Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan have named it their personal favorite System of a Down record, and it is easy to hear why — loose, ferocious, and unpredictable, it captures the band at their most unfiltered.

Spread across two LPs, this is the definitive way to experience an album that turned a bad situation into one of the most singular records of its era.