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Three Tuesdays in 2001: Iowa, Toxicity and God Hates Us All, 25 Years On

Foto: Aniol — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three Tuesdays in 2001: Iowa, Toxicity and God Hates Us All, 25 Years On

Slipknot, System of a Down and Slayer released records on three consecutive Tuesdays in 2001, exactly seven days apart, and the third one reached stores on the morning of September 11. Under the dates runs one producer, one label, and the distance between #1 and #28.

The Tuesday rule

For most of the CD era, new records in the United States came out on a Tuesday. That is why the sequence below lines up without a gap or an overlap: one heavy record per street date for three weeks running.

AlbumBandReleaseBillboard 200 debutFirst week (US)
IowaSlipknotTuesday, August 28, 2001#3255,000
ToxicitySystem of a DownTuesday, September 4, 2001#1220,000
God Hates Us AllSlayerTuesday, September 11, 2001#2851,000

Each record was a different answer to the same question: how heavy can a mainstream rock record get and still sell. By mid September the question had been measured, in one company, in one week. Then the country stopped asking it for a while.

August 28: a record made by nine people who could not stand each other

Slipknot recorded Iowa between January 22 and March 16, 2001, at Sound City and Sound Image in Van Nuys, California, with Ross Robinson producing alongside the band. Robinson broke his back in a dirt bike accident during the sessions, came back from the hospital and finished the job. The band had gone from an Iowa club act to arena stars in about eighteen months, and the record is what that did to them. Corey Taylor: “There was nothing happy about Iowa.” He recorded the title track naked, throwing up, cutting himself with glass. Joey Jordison saw the same sessions from another angle: “Iowa, even more than the first record, was the album we really wanted to make.” (Wikipedia)

They spent that summer on the Ozzfest main stage under a reunited Black Sabbath (Billboard), then the record came out and sold 255,000 copies in its first week. It debuted at #3, held off the top by Alicia Keys’ Songs in A Minor and Aaliyah’s self-titled album. Aaliyah had died in a plane crash in the Bahamas three days earlier. Iowa went to #1 in the UK and Canada and was platinum in the US inside six weeks.

Slipknot’s answer to the question was to keep pushing until the mainstream gave up. It did not.

September 4: the word they took out of the title

System of a Down cut Toxicity at Cello Studios in Hollywood with Rick Rubin and Daron Malakian producing and Serj Tankian credited as co-producer. More than thirty songs came out of the sessions; the leftovers became another record the following year. (Wikipedia)

The night before release, the band booked a free show in Hollywood for 3,500 people. Somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 turned up. Police cancelled the show before the band played, and when security took the banner down off the stage the crowd tore the place apart: about $30,000 in destroyed gear, six hours of chaos, six arrests. Manager David “Beno” Benveniste said later that none of it would have happened if the band had played, or if anyone had announced the cancellation properly. (Louder)

The next morning Toxicity was in stores. It debuted at #1 with 220,000 copies.

The lead single had originally been called “Suicide”. Bassist Shavo Odadjian says that was the title; Rubin remembers it as “Self-Righteous Suicide”. It became “Chop Suey!” because of radio, and Malakian insists nobody at the label forced the change: “We were, like, ‘It’s our first single from the album, do we want to give the radio a reason not to play it?’” (Louder) Hold that thought for nine days.

System of a Down’s answer was that the mainstream will take anything heavy if you wrap it in a melody, and the #1 debut was the proof.

September 11: God Hates Us All

Slayer’s ninth album was scheduled for July 10, 2001. Three things pushed it back: problems with the mix, a fight over the cover, and Rubin’s label, American Recordings, switching distributors that year from Columbia to Universal. Label paperwork moved God Hates Us All to the Tuesday it ended up on. (Wikipedia)

The songs were written from spring 1999 and recorded in about three months in spring 2001 at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, with Matt Hyde producing. Jeff Hanneman: “A lot of shit built up inside of me and I wanted to get it all out with something really heavy.” (Loudwire) The cover is a Bible with nails driven in to form a pentagram, blood poured over it, the band name burned across the top. The big retail chains demanded a censored sleeve. Inside, the lyrics sit next to passages from the Book of Job crossed out in black marker.

It debuted at #28 with 51,000 copies. “Disciple”, whose chorus is the album title, got a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance and lost to Tool’s “Schism”.

Kerry King had explained the title before anyone knew what day it would land on: “God Hates Us All isn’t an anti-Christian line as much as it’s an idea I think a lot of people can relate to on a daily basis.” That same Tuesday, Dream Theater released Live Scenes from New York with the Manhattan skyline in flames on the cover. It was pulled and reissued with new art. (Wikipedia)

Slayer’s answer was that they did not care how much the mainstream could take. Twenty-five years on, it is the one of the three that has never needed a footnote.

The knot: one man, one label, seven days

The connection the anniversary pieces will miss starts in 1986, when Rubin signed Slayer to Def Jam and produced Reign in Blood. Columbia, which distributed Def Jam, refused to ship the record over the cover and “Angel of Death”; it went out through Geffen instead. (Wikipedia)

Fifteen years later, Rubin produces Toxicity and takes System of a Down to #1 on his own label. Seven days after that, on the same label, Slayer’s record comes out, made with a different producer because Slayer did not want Rubin in the room. King: “I wanted to work with someone into the heavy-music scene, and Rubin’s not anymore.” And the record slid to September 11 in part because Rubin’s label was between distributors.

The same man and the same company, one week apart: 220,000 copies against 51,000. Whatever the mainstream could bear in 2001, American Recordings measured it with two releases and a calendar.

On the other side of Los Angeles, Ross Robinson, the man behind Korn’s early records and Sepultura’s Roots, was in Van Nuys letting Corey Taylor bleed in front of a microphone. That was the other school of heavy, with its own producer, running in the same few weeks.

What the next fortnight did to all three

On September 13, Clear Channel circulated a memo to roughly 1,170 stations with a list of about 165 songs considered lyrically questionable. “Chop Suey!” was on it. The band had taken “suicide” out of the title so radio would have no excuse; nine days after release, radio dropped it anyway. (Wikipedia · Consequence)

The same day, Serj Tankian posted an essay called “Understanding Oil” on the band’s site, a thousand words on US policy in the Middle East, two days after the attacks. Sony took it down. He was accused of justifying the attacks and received death threats. On September 20 he went on Howard Stern to defend it. Years later: “I wrote the essay because I was trying to understand it myself, and it really backfired.” (Louder)

September 14 was meant to open the Pledge of Allegiance Tour, with Slipknot and System of a Down as co-headliners. The opening dates moved to October and one show was cancelled outright. Slayer was not on that bill. (RammWiki) On September 18, Clear Channel issued a statement saying it had not banned any songs from any of its stations.

Where the thread goes next

On October 24, 2026, Sick New World Texas puts System of a Down and Slayer on the same bill at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and the bill is built around 40 years of Reign in Blood, the Rubin record. Kerry King had said last December that Slayer would never tour again. (Metal Injection · Guitar.com)

So the two halves of the 2001 knot share a stage in two months. What I keep turning over is this: if American had shipped God Hates Us All on July 10 as planned, with Ozzfest still on the road and no Tuesday of that kind in the way, does it still stall at #28? Argue with me at @realrocklab on X or Threads.

Sources

In this web: Slipknot · System of a Down · Slayer · Ross Robinson · Corey Taylor · Rick Rubin · Kerry King · Serj Tankian