Chop Suey:
The meaning is from the great quote from Father Armeni (not with a on end) but Armeni who was saying to the land after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. He was speaking why have you forsaken me in your eyes and also saying in his speech self righteous suicide has taken place. Armeni was like the Zorba to the greeks. The real person so respected he almost became mythical. He wrote poetry about our land and so that song was dedicated to him and Armenia any many years ago. - by Osheen Cerrahyan
Prison Song:
Due to its straightforward lyrics and highly understandable political message, a lot has been said about "Prison Song." Serj summarized the song very well in this interview: It's about mandatory minimum sentences and the drug policy that this country harbors, utilizing it for its own globalist purposes. The drug war shouldn't be waged in Columbia or anywhere else in the world, it should be waged on our borders. We are the biggest drug-using nation, and if we can't stop it from coming into our borders, we have no right to go and mess with other people's countries and crops and what-not. And set up puppet regimes to give us what we want. The true matter-of-fact reason for the drug war is to fund things that Congress will not fund in foreign policy, that the administration wants to achieve. We all know that. We've seen the [San Jose] Mercury [News] reports--I think it was they who first released the CIA's importing cocaine from Argentina and some other nations. [Ed. note: That controversial 1996 story did not report a concrete link between the CIA and the cocaine trade, but strongly implied a connection. Click here for some background.] We've all seen this many times. Our security forces, if you want to call them that, have been caught with white powder in their hands, importing it themselves, and that's very sad. But you've got to think of when the drug problem started in the first place. It started in the '60s, not because of the freedom movement or the rights movements. It started in the '60s in the ghettos as a form of oppression, when the police were going and shooting around the Black Panthers offices, when they needed something like drugs to make people ... numb. So I think the administration has been very complicit in the drug problem. In my opinion, they partially created it. The above excerpt is the best possible explanation for the song, so the gist of this interpretation comes straight from Serj himself. However, some commonly asked questions about certain parts of the song do arise. When asked about the "new non-rich" in this MTV interview, Serj said the following: Most of the population of the industrial world — as well as most of the non-industrialized world — is the non-rich. Also, a lot of people wonder what it means when Daron states, "I buy my crack, I smack my bitch, Right here in Hollywood." It appears to be explaining the drug war simply does not work. If one can buy crack in Hollywood, why intervene in other countries on behalf of drugs? The problem is within the United States, not abroad. - by soadonline.com
Deer Dance:
Deer Dance is fairly simple if you read the lyrics. It's about peaceful demonstrations and the riot police that often assault their participants, usually out of fear of the crowd. You can hear many direct references to the police and the demonstrators: To visible police, Presence sponsored fear, The very presence of the police is an attempt to inspire fear into the demonstrators. Battalions of riot police, With rubber bullet kisses, Baton courtesy, Service with a smile They carry both rubber bullets and batons as weapons. The chorus discusses the possession of automatic weapons and using them to scare the demonstrators, or "children," as Serj says it: Pushing little children, With their fully automatics, They like to push the weak around, The inspiration for Deer Dance seems to be a demonstration once performed by a group of Native Americans. In his essay, Circle of Fear, Serj talks about the police forces that unnecessarily persisted in dispersing a crowd on September 3, 2001, at a free System of a Down show sponsored by KROQ. He refers to a Native American protest, in which the participants literally performed a "deer dance": What was missing was an invitation to peace....a deer dance perhaps, as in the DNC protests a year before, where Native Americans from Arizona delivered a welcoming dance to deer during their respective season. The eloquent movements and delivery of methodical action on stage derailed the overwhelming aggressive visuals of riot police, and created the only thing that could have saved the day-the smile of a young child watching the event. The dance, a symbol of harmless protest, creates a smile in a young child--a symbol of peace. - by soadonline.com
Aerials:
there was something unreal to the song, not just to the depth and vastness of what the lyrics say and want to say, but the music makes you want to feel what the band members were feeling at the time, because you not only grasp one point of view of the whole entity but different versions of the same idea. you see, the first time i heard the song i thought aerials:war, then airplanes...kinda like when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the nuke that lights up to become a mushroom (sugar comes to mind, but then again there are various theories), later i remembered a theory i came to share, we are all one collective consciousness, whether that knowledge is past, present or future, because we all share a same history and a same origin. that's why we are all one in the river (before we're born) and one again after the fall (when we die). as we live out our lives its full of obstacles and deceptions, it's all a world of illusions (swimming through the void), when we're born we are a blank page, and the words taht are going to be written on it define the ending, its course or its continuity...we can't type, because we're to young so "others" help us by writing a draft or a guide of some sort (we hear the word), we can't grasp its meaning yet so we get lost in this world, sometimes forever. we get drawn by images that are heir to unimportant things..such as money...this hereld far greater obstacles and misguide us from the draft we always are stubborn enough to do what we think is right, but when we realize its wrong we don't stay and accept the consequences that may follow (we are the ones that want to play, always want to go but never want to stay), most of us run away from our troubles, we don't want to accept we're wrong, we don't want to accept we're not perfect, we don't want to accept we are human... when we look up at the sky we see our dreams, our thoughts, our failures, our mistakes, our faults, our strengths and weaknesses, we can see it all...some of us just dont care enough to see the whole picture. and as sad as this may sound, there are ppl in this realm that will probably never understand. they have lost the draft, and stained the page. there are forces, that prevent us from growing, from developing, from loving, from fighting "them". some minds are chained to a wall and we'll likely not break free from those chains without help. its true that we are earth's worst enemy, we only take what we need and don't give back anything positve in return...and we ignore the damages and wounds we inflict, we simply dont care (we drink from the river then we turn around and put up our walls) we always want to justify our decisions, even though we talk well and hear well, it just doesn't matter because we are blind to see the problem in front of us, we can barely breath the air around us...we need to open our eyes, we need to wake up from these nightmares, ...because when you struggle no matter the obstacle, stand up for what you believe in, even though you may be alone, and don't give when you're suffering, ...you'll reach the point where you'll take hold of the page and transform it into free thought its true what they say: "when you lose small mind, you free your mind..." -soadfan