Though System of a Down has not released new material in years, their groundbreaking music continues to captivate audiences worldwide. The band’s unique and unpredictable songwriting process, which defied traditional conventions both musically and lyrically, played a pivotal role in shaping their signature sound. In a recent interview with Lilian Tahmasian (via Ultimate Guitar), drummer John Dolmayan offered a fascinating glimpse into how the band’s iconic tracks came to life, shedding light on the creation of the unforgettable drumbeat in “Toxicity.”
Dolmayan spoke candidly about the pressure he felt when a new song was brought to the band. “Sure, there’s a lot of those moments, but to think about it, there’s a lot of pressure on me when the songs come in,” he explained. “Okay, so let’s say Daron writes a song. Sometimes, it’s years before he brings it to us. At the very least, I don’t think there’s anything he brought into System that was less than six months.”
He continued, detailing how much time the band members spent crafting and refining a song before Dolmayan ever added his drum parts. “So he’s had all this time to think about what it’s going to sound like and all these things, and then pretty much nothing happens until I put drums on it. And if I don’t like the drums, it’s very unlikely that song’s going to end up on an album.”
Dolmayan recalled how the band would listen to the song together before he started working on the drums. “He’d play me the song. It would be, well, the way we used to do. We haven’t made a record in a long time – but Daron would be in front of me, and then Shavo and Serj on one side, and he would play us the song, and we’d just listen. I’d be sitting on my drum set while he’s playing the song.”
Unlike many drummers, Dolmayan was meticulous in his approach. He described how he would intentionally discard his initial ideas. “Almost immediately, the first things that come to mind, I would throw away. Because if it’s the first thing that comes to my mind, it might be the first thing that comes to somebody else’s mind, and I don’t want my drumming to sound like that.”
Instead of opting for easy or predictable patterns, Dolmayan would challenge himself to think outside the box: “So then I would be like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to do that, because that’s the first thing and the easiest thing, I’m not going to take the easy path.’ Then I’d be like, ‘Well, what doesn’t fit? How do I make it fit? Can it fit?’ And that’s kind of how we did it.”
However, sometimes the creative spark struck in the most unexpected ways. Dolmayan shared the story behind the now-iconic drumbeat in “Toxicity,” which emerged not through careful planning, but from frustration. The song had initially been brought to the band by bassist Shavo, with guitarist Daron adding another part. After piecing it together over a couple of months, the song came to Dolmayan for the drum part.
“I couldn’t think of anything. And then Shavo was like, ‘Well, why don’t you do this?’ I was like, ‘Shavo, let me go through my process here,’” Dolmayan recalled. “But he kept irritating me. So I was like, ‘Whoa! Like this!?’ And then that was the beat. He goes, ‘Yeah, like that,’ and that was the beat. It came out of nowhere.”
What began as an offhand reaction to a persistent suggestion quickly turned into one of the most memorable and influential drumbeats in rock music. “I didn’t even think about it, I just did something because he was irritating me and I was mimicking him,” Dolmayan admitted. “I don’t even think he wanted that. He later said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I meant.’ Sure, it’s what you meant. But it can come from nowhere. But that’s it, that’s the song now, and I would say that’s what I’m most highly regarded for, the beat for that song, which was completely a mistake.”
The serendipitous creation of the “Toxicity” drumbeat is a testament to the unpredictable and often chaotic nature of System of a Down’s creative process, showing that sometimes the most iconic moments in music come from unexpected places.
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