System of a Down

System of a Down's debut came out on American Recordings and Columbia on 30 June 1998 as CK 68924. Rick Rubin produced it with the band, Sylvia Massy engineered it and D. Sardy mixed it. The band had built a following in Los Angeles clubs while label after label passed, seeing an all-Armenian group as a novelty that would not travel beyond its own community. Rubin came to see them at the Viper Room and offered a deal. Daron Malakian recalls that they had been about to sign with Universal until a visit to its offices convinced them nobody there knew what to do with rock. Part of it was recorded at Rubin's mansion, and Serj Tankian has described singing inside a tent pitched in the middle of a room that was never built as a studio, with antique furniture brought in for the right atmosphere. Before the sessions John Dolmayan took over the drums from Andy Khachaturian. The open hand on the cover comes from a poster John Heartfield designed for the Communist Party of Germany, and the back cover rewrites its slogan. The singles were "Sugar" and "Spiders". The album sold only 3,000 copies in its first week and then kept on selling: gold on 2 February 2000 and double platinum by 2022. It did not enter the Billboard 200 until October 1999, more than a year after its release, and its highest position there, 113, came in 2022. The Japanese edition followed on 1 October 1998 as SRCS-8757, adding "Marmalade" and "Storaged". The running order here is the original's as printed.