The early 2000s were kind of a breeding ground for edgy, hardcore rock groups that appealed to a teenage Iowan like me. Heck, Iowa was the home state for the masked metal group Slipknot. It was also when music was insanely political. I was 13, angry with my country’s leaders, and was eager to get into politics. My brother, knowing all of this, gave me the album that changed my life: Toxicity by System of a Down.
System of a Down was my favorite band for a very long time. I can still nail every lyric in many of their songs. They were an incredibly political band who moved to America from Armenia, and they became my lifeblood. I saw them in concert twice (once at OzzFest, Ozzy Osbourne’s music festival). I took the day off of school when their album Mezmorize came out.
Growing up, I spent a lot of my time doing three things: playing video games, listening to hard rock, and watching terrible videos on Newgrounds with my friends. This was in the really early 2000s, before YouTube was a thing and Internet Explorer was a top-tier web browser (or really the only web browser). Newgrounds was a website full of Flash-based animations for all types of fandom and original content. There were games, songs, videos, all user-generated. I’m sure that everyone who is around the age of 30 can give you a list of their favorite Newgrounds games or videos.
So, imagine my surprise and joy when I found this.
Now, you may be wondering why I was so excited to find this. Well, it sounds exactly like System of a Down. That is Serj Tankian’s voice! There is even a debate in the comments about whether it was some group named The Rabbit Joint or if it was System of a Down. Well, I had never heard of those rabbit guys, so that was incontrovertible evidence that it was my beloved band.
It was honestly the first time I felt validated as a gamer by people other than my friends. The greatest band in history obviously loved Zelda so much that they wrote a parody song about it! Oh, we had debates about it. “Zach, it says it was written by The Rabbit Joint right there in the description,” my friends would cry. But I knew better. I knew what System of a Down sounded like. Plus, there were many other videos on early YouTube that said that it wasn’t The Rabbit Joint and, as we all know, you can’t just lie on the internet. There was even a live video!
Years pass. As I grew up, I calmed down, started to listen to other, less angry music. I completely forgot about this weird little part of my tween years. Then, in college, I was chatting with a friend and the topic of Newgrounds came up. “Yeah, the best one was the System of a Down Zelda song!” The conversation stopped.
“What are you talking about?” my friend asked.
So, we get on his computer, bring up Newgrounds, and find the video. The whole time, I’m talking about how cool it was and that they even played it live. After it ends, my friend just looks at me with a “You’ve got to be kidding me” face. I think that was when it finally sunk in that I was just telling myself what I wanted to be true. Ultimately, I don’t care who wrote it, the song is still a banger.
This article is my penance to The Rabbit Joint. I want to formally apologize for willfully misattributing your fantastic Zelda song to System of a Down. I was young and stupid. Now, as someone who is older and stupid, I want to make things right. Thank you, The Rabbit Joint, for making a work that truly affected me as a kid. Hopefully, this article will help make your name go down into history.
