Enemy of the System
album by The Toasters

Enemy of the System is a studio album by the ska band the Toasters, released in 2002. The album was the first Toasters release on Asian Man Records; their long standing label Moon Ska Records became defunct in 2000. It was released 5 years after Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down, due to the demise of ska label Moon Ska and, also, the decrease of third wave ska's mainstream popularity that saw the disappearance of a lot of ska bands some years before. The band supported the album with a North American tour. "Dog Eat Dog" is about the music business and the band's label struggles.
Critical reception
Exclaim! noted that "there is nothing new here; the music is poppy ska mixed with rock, blasting horns and Bucket's trademarked vocals." Trouser Press opined that "the music is consistently upbeat, but the playing is even more restrained and predictable than it was on Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Enemy of the System” is album by The Toasters. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Enemy, System and album, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “album by The Toasters” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5376803. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 2000.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Enemy of the System” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.