Aerials Chop Suey Toxicity System Of A Down

Aerials Album: Toxicity (2001)
Chop Suey! Album: Toxicity (2001)
Toxicity
by System Of A Down

Aerials is about how people can lose their identities and become just like everyone else. Some lyric analysis:

"Life is a waterfall, we're one in the river, one again after the fall." - We all start off the same and we all end up the same.

"Swimming through the void, we hear the words, we lose ourselves, but we find it all." - As we go through life we are told lessons, but we ignore them. We forget who we really are in the mix of seeking the synthetic lifestyle, and that's the price to lose who we really are.

"'Cause we are the ones that wanna play, always want to go, but you never want to stay." - We always want to be part of the scene. We strive for what we want and when we get it, it still does not satisfy.

"And we are the ones that want to choose, always wanna play, but you never wanna lose." - We want and want. We do whatever we can but if trouble is ever near we do whatever we can to maintain innocence.

"When you lose small mind you free your life." - When we stop to see the full picture is when we really have control of our lives.

"Life is a waterfall, we drink from the river then we turn around and put up our walls." - We take and take and in the end we give nothing. This shows how greedy, oblivious and inconsiderate people can be.

Toxicity was the highly anticipated follow-up to System Of A Down's 1998 self-titled debut album. It was released on September 4, 2001 and went straight to #1 in America, but then September 11 happened. For a while, there was little music to be heard in the US, and when radio stations returned to regular programming, many dropped the first single, "Chop Suey," which references death and suicide.

The album kept going strong, just on a different schedule. The title track was issued as the second single in January 2002 and made a strong showing on rock radio. "Aerials" was issued a few months later as the third single and did even better. It made #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart September 28, over a year after the album was issued. On October 5, it topped the Alternative Songs chart, reflecting the wide cross-section of radio stations that played the song. The album ended up selling over 3 million in America - not bad for an off-the-wall Armenian metal band.

The lyrics were written by guitarist Daron Malakian and lead singer Serj Tankian; Malakian wrote the music. They also have producer credits on the album along with their label boss, Rick Rubin, who was a big part of System's success.

SOAD drummer John Dolmayan told MTV: "Aerials is a gentle song, but at the same time, it has a lot of angst coming out. It was one of those things where it was just instant. We all felt it. It came together real fast, like it was meant to be put together that day."

The music video was a joint effort between the group's bass player, Shavo Odadjian, and the British director David Slade. It follows a young boy who appears to be at least part Klingon. We see him in a photo shoot and a press junket, but he seems to be a bona fide celebrity rather than a curiosity. The band is from the Hollywood area and often looks at that culture as if peering into a fun house mirror. The video got a lot of spins on MTV and Fuse.

"Aerials" is the last track on the Toxicity album. On the CD, right after the song ends, another song called "Arto" comes on as a hidden track. "Arto" is based on a traditional Armenian song with a chant that is played at funerals in the Armenian community. It is named "Arto" because their friend Arto Tuncboyaciyan played a duduk (a reed instrument similar to an oboe) on the track. Daron and Serj's grandparents both wept when they heard it.

The band performed Aerials on Saturday Night Live when they were musical guests for the May 7, 2005 episode. Their appearance is most remembered for the first song they played, "B.Y.O.B.," a song that repeats the line "Where the f--k are you?" They sang it as is, but NBC put the performance on a five-second delay to mute it.

There's a lot going on in Chop Suey, both musically and lyrically. It touches on drug addiction, but doesn't have the somber tone that many songs about addiction have. The song can also be interpreted to be about how society views death or about Christ.

Guitarist Daron Malakian, who wrote Chop Suey with lead singer Serj Tankian, explained: "The song is about how when people die, they will be regarded differently depending on the way they pass. Like, if I were to die from a drug overdose, everyone would say I deserved it because I abused drugs, hence the line 'Angels deserve to die.'"

Chop Suey is a Chinese stew made with meat or fish, plus bamboo sprouts, onions, rice and water chestnuts. They used it for the name of the song because it describes their musical style, with lots of stuff thrown together. The title is not in the lyrics.

The original name of the song was "Suicide," but Columbia Records made them change it to make it radio friendly. In the beginning of the song, you hear lead singer Serj Tankian say "we're rolling suicide." The title is a bit of a play on words - "Suey-cide."

The video was directed by Marcos Siega, who has also worked with blink-182 and Papa Roach. It was shot in the parking lot of a cheap hotel near where the band grew up in Los Angeles. Before the shoot, they posted a note on their website inviting fans to come down and participate. Since they were not well known, they thought they would get about 500, but instead 1500 fans showed up. The fans (mostly kids) were instructed to swarm the stage so they could help capture the energy of their live shows.

Rick Rubin, who had worked with Slayer, Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, produced the Toxicity album. Speaking with Rolling Stone about "Chop Suey," he said: "It's an unusual song because the verse is so frantic. The style is so broken up and unusual. It's both difficult to sing and arguably difficult to listen to, but then the chorus is this big, soaring, emotional, surging, beautiful thing. And then it's got this incredible bridge:

Father, father, father, do you commend my spirit?
Father, why have you forsaken me?

It's just real heavy, biblical and grand. It's so unusual that it goes between these crazy rhythmic explosive verses into this emotional, anthemic ending."

Chop Suey was the first single from System Of A Down's second album, Toxicity, and their breakout hit. The band was an unlikely success story, emerging in mid-'90s Los Angeles with unpredictable, often lyrically inscrutable songs with very high pulse rates. They're all of Armenian descent, and early on many of their fans were friends from the Armenian community, which led many labels to believe they had just a small niche. Rick Rubin, one of the more adventurous figures in music, signed them in 1997 and turned them loose, releasing their first album (which he produced) in 1998. After about a year of touring, it became clear their appeal was widespread - they were in many ways an antidote to the boy bands that were dominating pop music at the time. By the time they released Toxicity on September 4, 2001, they had a substantial and fervent fanbase. The album went straight to #1, defying predictions from years earlier that they would only appeal to Armenians.

"Chop Suey" was climbing the charts when it was silenced by the events of September 11, 2001. Just about every radio station pulled it from their playlists in an effort to be as sensitive as possible after the tragedy. Even though the song had nothing to do with terrorism, it was considered far too aggressive. The line "I cry when angels deserve to die" was a little too heavy for most program directors and listeners at that moment. When things settled down, the song returned to the airwaves pretty much where it left off, since there weren't many songs released in the weeks after 9/11.
We have Papa Roach to thank for clearing a path on MTV for cathartic songs that reference suicide. Their "Last Resort" video, also directed by Marcos Siega, hit the network in 2000 and was highly censored, with not only the word "suicide" edited out, but also related references like "bleeding" and "took my life tonight." By the time System released the "Chop Suey" video, which aired unedited, it was clear that young people were finding connection and meaning in these songs, and were in no danger of attempting suicide simply by hearing the word.

Jesus said, "I commend my spirit" in Luke 23:46, which is most likely where that part of the song came from. The line "Why have you forsaken me, in your eyes forsaken me?" is likely referring to Isaiah 49:14, which says "The Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me." >>
SOAD named the album Toxicity in honor of Los Angeles, which they considered a "Toxic City." They grew up and went to school near the seedy area of Hollywood and wanted people to know that it wasn't all glamorous.

The lyrics have many possible interpretations and permutations, but one guy who has never paid attention to them is the band's drummer, John Dolmayan, who said in a Songfacts interview: "Most of the time when I listen to music, I listen to the melody and the way the lyrics syncopate within the song, but not necessarily the lyrics. I'd say the closest lyrics I pay attention to are Rush lyrics – those are more like stories."

In 1896, the new Chinese ambassador to the United States, Li Hung-Chang arrived in New York with a large staff including three cooks. He was determined to impress the Americans with the values of Chinese culture and cuisine and he gave a dinner party to which he invited distinguished members of both the American and Chinese communities. To make the event memorable, he instructed his chefs to include in the menu an entirely new course which would appeal equally to western and eastern palates. The result was a mixture of chopped bean sprouts, celery and meat in a soy sauce, all finely cut up and served under the name of Chop Suey, the English "chop" combined with Chinese "bits," spelled phonetically "suey." (From the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce)

In 2007, Avril Lavigne did a live cover of "Chop Suey" that didn't go over well with System of a Down fans. It was described as "Choplicated."
Tankian pulled the "Father, into your hands. Why have you forsaken me?" lyric randomly from a book. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Rick Rubin said Tankian struggled to come up with a lyric for the bridge. "We're sitting in the library in my old house and he said 'I don't have words for this' and we were finishing and it's like, OK. 'Any ideas?' He didn't have any ideas."

Rubin suggested Tankian pick a book off the wall, which he did. The producer then told him to "open it to any page, tell me the first phrase you see." The singer opened it, "And the first phrase he sees, that's what's in the song, and it's a high point in the song. It's incredible, like magic."

"It's wild," Rubin added. "The context, it doesn't really make sense to what's going on, it's rad."

Rubin doesn't detail what book Tankian took the lyric from, but it's likely it was the Bible or a religious tome.

Rapper and singer Lil Uzi Vert covered the song in 2023. His version, titled "CS", is the 17th track on his Pink Tape album.

When Rolling Stone unveiled its list of the 250 Best Songs of the 21st Century (So Far) in October 2025, metal was barely represented. Just two tracks made the cut: Mastodon's Leviathan anthem "Blood And Thunder" at #230, and "Chop Suey!" - the highest-ranking metal entry - at #174.

The word "Toxicity" means the level of toxins in an item. There is lots of room for interpretation in the lyrics, as the toxins could refer to the city of Los Angeles (a "toxic city") and the Hollywood lifestyle, but could also be a commentary on the music industry, religion, corruption, drugs or any number of things that the band feels is poisoning people.

Toxicity is the title track from System Of A Down's second album, which like their self-titled 1998 debut, was produced by Rick Rubin. After building a following in Los Angeles, the band signed to Rubin's label, American Recordings. They took their time with Toxicity, recording over 30 songs for it before winnowing it down to 15. It was issued on September 4, 2001, just a week before 9/11. The lead single, "Chop Suey," got pulled from playlists and for a few months nobody was talking about the latest music. As life went back to (a new) normal, promotion on the album resumed, and in January 2002, "Toxicity" was released as the second single. It did well, but the more accessible (by System standards) "Aerials" was issued as the third single and did even better, going to #1 on both the Mainstream Rock and Alternative Songs charts. The album sold over 3 million copies in America.

The songs that were recorded for the album but didn't make it comprised the bulk of their next album, Steal This Album!, in 2002. Their next album didn't appear until 2005 with Mezmerize, which like Toxicity, went to #1 in the US.

The video was the first one directed by the band's bass player, Shavo Odadjian, who co-directed it with Marcos Siega, who did the video for "Chop Suey." Like "Chop Suey," the video shows the band performing on a small stage surrounded by fans, who go bananas when the band gets to the rave-up section. Odadjian explained to MTV: "The universe is the sacred silence and sleep, and the kids are the disorder. So how do you control the disorder in that universe? You can't. To me, that's 'Toxicity.'"

SOAD drummer John Dolmayan told MTV: "'Toxicity' was one of those songs where we hadn't done anything like it before. It required something completely different than any other System song did. The guitars are just, in some ways, really powerful, and in others, they just step back so that the melody can take over a little bit. So it's a really good combination of aggression and melodic elements, which represents this album."

During a performance at the 2005 Download Festival, Daron Malakian said that the song was about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a condition that causes a person to have trouble concentrating.

You, what do you own the world?
How do you own disorder? Disorder
Now somewhere between the sacred silence
Sacred silence and sleep
Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep
Disorder, disorder, disorder

Speaking on Soul Boom, the podcast hosted by actor Rainn Wilson (The Office), Serj Tankian discussed the lyric "sacred silence and sleep."

Tankian explained that "sacred silence" refers to a Native American understanding of spirituality. It's the meditative state you reach by quieting the mind. "Everything is lost and everything is found" within this silence, suggested Tankian. It's a place where understanding dawns and connections are forged.

Tankian credited survivalist and author Tom Brown Jr. for influencing his lyrics. Brown's books explore the wisdom of Native American traditions, particularly the concept of living in harmony with nature. It's this concept, Tankian explained, that underlies the "spirituality of the Native American world."

The line "somewhere between" refers to the bridge between deep meditation and sleep, specifically REM sleep. "Sleep – we know what sleep is," Tankian said with a chuckle. But in that REM state, he argued, "there's a moment where you're meditating and you just don't know it. It refers to that moment, that specific unique moment."