"Pogo pogo pogo!" commands System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian on "Bounce," a blistering slice of mosh-ready madness on the L.A. heavy rockers' latest. And for 44 granite-solid minutes, that's what your limbs, eyes and brain will be doing as they absorb Toxicity's bilious, thrilling metal mechanics. Guided by producer Rick Rubin, SOAD steps up to tell the world it's no fly-by-night buncha testosterone rock idjits. Tankian's stupefying ability to change up from a satanic, guttural howl to a lustrous melody is just one part of Toxicity's depth; elsewhere, Daron Malakian's nimble, rumbling guitar solos (his riffs on "Psycho" and "Deer Dance" would make a Guitar Institute grad drool) gobble up the chunky, ferocious blueprint set by drummer John Dolmayan, who even displays his jazz chops on "Shimmy." The Armenian-American group has been busy training for the high-profile follow-up to its gold 1998 debut, and it shows. The Middle Eastern-tinged "Science" and classically flavored "Chop Suey," a glistening epic replete with hellraising call-and-response and pretty, mellow strings, show the band's ability to balance socio-political sermonizing with primal rage. Sludgy, mean and well-educated, the band has its funny side, too: "Psycho" is a scorching dissertation on coke-snorting starfuckers. Toxicity is a knife in the gut of bad rap-metal; why rage against the machine when you can rage against bad music?

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