Steal This Album!

Steal This Album! came out on Columbia and American Recordings on 26 November 2002 as CK 87062. In early 2002 more than a dozen unfinished songs from the Toxicity era began circulating online under the name "Toxicity II". Unhappy that fans were hearing incomplete work, the band finished the recordings in a hurry and released them as this album in time for the holiday season. Sony Music Japan's own note on its edition says the same: the leaked recordings were all unfinished, so the band recorded them properly for an urgent release. Rick Rubin and Daron Malakian produced it and Andy Wallace mixed it. The plain packaging was modelled on a home-burned CD-R, and the title nods to the political activist Abbie Hoffman. Some of the songs had been started during the Toxicity sessions and left off that record for the sake of its flow, and the band has always insisted this is not a collection of B-sides. "I-E-A-I-A-I-O" grew out of drummer John Dolmayan's childhood encounter with Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff. It reached number 15 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum by the RIAA on 29 July 2004. "Innervision" climbed to number 12 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and "Boom!" was given an anti-war video made with the director Michael Moore, built around the worldwide peace demonstrations of 15 February 2003. The Japanese edition followed on 26 December 2002 as SICP-311. The running order here is the original's as printed.