S.O.A.D. Appropriate Lyrics From An Unexpected Source

I met my husband 12 years ago and he was very into "heavy Metal" and that genre, where as I ave always been a Pop, Top 40, Country and Oldies gal myself. I thought metal was harsh and would always ask him, "Seriously, what do they have to be soo angry about?" It was a joke for awhile (and I still don't understand a lot of it lol), but then it got to the point that the only thing I could do to get through him playing it at home or in the car was to listen to the lyrics.

The band that changed my opinion (slightly) was System Of A Down. The lyrics of this band's songs are extremely intense, revolution inciting actually if you listen closely enough. I was reminded of several of their songs over the past few weeks with all the going's on within and without our borders. One of my favorite songs is B.Y.O.B. (off their 2005 album Mezmerize, part of a two-part album release that year) which is about the lies our leaders tell us in order to gain our support for going to war... Syria brought these lyrics to my frontal lobe.

WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR!
Barbarisms by Barbera's
With pointed heels.
Victorious, victories kneel.
For brand new spankin' deals.
Marching forward hypocritic
And hypnotic computers.
You depend on our protection,

Yet you feed us lies from the table cloth.
La la la la la la la la la,
Everybody's going to the party have a real good time.
Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine.

Kneeling roses disappearing,
Into Moses' dry mouth,
Breaking into Fort Knox,
Stealing our intentions,
Hangars sitting dripped in oil,
Crying FREEDOM!

Handed to obsoletion,
Still you feed us lies from the table cloth.
La la la la la la la la la,
Everybody's going to the party have a real good time.
Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine.
Everybody's going to the party have a real good time.
Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine.

Blast off, it's party time,
And we don't live in a fascist nation,
Blast off, it's party time,
And where the f*** are you?
Where the f*** are you?
Where the f*** are you?

Why don't presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?
Why don't presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor? [X4]

There's a little more to it, but mostly repeated lyrics and the repeated chorus. Here's a link to the video for anyone interested. B.Y.O.B.

Then I thought of the song "Chop Suey" (off of their 2001 album Toxicity) when discussing the Self Immolation of 64 year old John Constantino this past Friday in D.C.

Wake up (wake up)
Grab a brush and put a little make-up
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
Here you go create another fable

You wanted to
Grab a brush and put a little makeup
You wanted to
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up
You wanted to
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
You wanted to

I don't think you trust
In my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die, die

Wake up (wake up)
Grab a brush and put a little make-up
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up
Hide the scars to fade away the
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
Here you go create another fable

You wanted to
Grab a brush and put a little make-up
You wanted to
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up
You wanted to
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
You wanted to

I don't think you trust
In my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die
In my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die

Father, father, father, father
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit
Father, into your hands
Why have you forsaken me?
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken me, oh

Trust in my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die
In my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die

These are the complete lyrics. It is about being abused and being made to believe by your abuser that it is your fault, your choice. What brought these lyric's to mind mostly was the verse:

Trust in my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die
In my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die!

And here's a link to this video as well: Chop Suey

And just for fun, since these are the lyrics for the deeply spiritual (yes, spiritual lol) song "Aeriels" (Also off of the album Toxicity). This song is a "how-to" of sorts, basically if you free your mind and look to the sky's, enlightenment is surely there for you.

Life is a waterfall
we're one in the river
and one again after the fall
swimming through the void
we hear the word
we lose ourselves
but we find it all....
cause we are the ones that want to play
always want to go
but you never want to stay
and we are the ones that want to choose
always want to play
but you never want to lose
aerials, in the sky
when you lose small mind
you free your life
life is a waterfall
we drink from the river
then we turn around and put up our walls
swimming through the void
we hear the word
we lose ourselves
but we find it all...
cause we are the ones that want to play
always want to go
but you never want to stay
and we are the ones that want to choose
always want to play
but you never want to lose
aerials, in the sky
when you lose small mind
you free your life
aerials, so up high
when you free your eyes eternal prize
aerials, in the sky
when you lose small mind
you free your life
aerials, so up high
when you free your eyes eternal prize

The linky: Aerials

...you're going to make a thread about SOAD lyrics and you post their 3 most popular singles...there are whole albums that came out before any of those songs that were deeper and much more "revolutionary" than the singles they put out. Listen to the lyrics from some of the songs on "Steal This Album" for instance. Songs from that album were supposed to be included as a second disc for Toxicity, but the record label wouldn't let them, so they released it under the name Steal This Album, and made the discs look like crudely drawn on blank cd's and the cases were just regular see-through cases haha. But the songs themselves are a collection of tracks that were previously written but unreleased for one reason or another. Their conception ranges from all the way to their first album.

Also, there's not much that spiritual about SOAD as much as they are political. If you want spiritual "heavy metal" listen to Tool. Anything by Tool is golden, they've literally never let their reputation be tarnished by a single solitary bad song, or even a bad lyric, or guitar riff for that matter. No note is wasted with them. Lateralus is probably their most "spiritual" album, with all of the lyrical content dealing with enlightenment, egolessness, sacrifice, ascension, alchemy, astrology, existence in general...very esoteric stuff, and much more beautiful and progressive music than SOAD in my opinion.

Another band you might enjoy is Rage Against the Machine.

reply to post by IrishCream


SOAD rock , if you want meaningful lyrics I give you .....BOOM


So glad they're back together , just hope they stop touring long enough to give us a new album .

reply to post by IrishCream


System Of A Down are just amazing. I have been listening to them since I was sixteen. I have to say however, that there is a long tradition in heavy metal, of commentary about current affairs, conspiracy, mental health issues...

In fact, heavy metal, I believe, is under rated in terms of the lyrical content that some bands install within the poetry that becomes the words they sing, shout, scream, and growl down their microphones, while delivering giant waves of mind buggering noise, as Douglas Adams would have put it. This commentary began well before the formation and eventual explosion in popularity, of System Of A Down. Anyone remember Megadeth and their tune Hanger 18? Look at the words to that song sometime, and tell me that MegaDave (the initiated know who I mean), was not talking about some serious Area 51 crap there.

War Pigs, by Black Sabbath, another example of a metal tune, written to smash the fans of their feet, but give them something to think about as well, even though the people who wrote it were so wasted at the time that what they were doing was probably not classiable as thinking!

Sometimes, when I am out and about (and my mp3 player is working), I will have someone at a bar, or at a bus stop, look at me funny. I will take out my earphones, and if they ask "what the HELL are you listening to", I usually offer them an ear bud, and let them see for themselves. The response I get varies dependant on the subject, but often I am asked exactly the question you asked... why are they so angry? After many years of this, I have developed a theory. The difference between good music and crap music, is good music is written by people who have a grasp of ALL their emotions, and choose to express the rawest and least easy to deal with.

Some people like to be emotionally engaged by such things, and others do not, and I dig that. But, thats why I listen to heavy metal. I can appreciate other types of soulful, thoughtful music, but heavy metal lyrics and intent covers subjects that are largely ignored by other genres, typically thought of as more socially acceptable. There is a band full of meat dodging veggies called, Cattle Decapitation. Their music is inspired by what they see as the injustice of eating animals. You can see how the ethical vegetarian veiwpoint could inspire some very dark, very brutal music, and if you read the lyrics (good luck hearing them all in the songs mind you... very growly vocals) you begin to understand the motivation behind the crushing guitars, the relentless thundering drumming, the broken savage beat structure.

I would be the first to admit, that there are some bands in the genre that just make a big old noise, and even that has its place when you are drunk as hell and just do not give a flying copulation any more. But the bands I really like to listen to? It is NEVER just noise with them. Oh, there will BE noise, but it always has a purpose. Sometimes it takes some light reading of the sleeve to figure out the lyrics, and what is meant by them, but there is always purpose.

If anything, Sytem Of A Down are a popular metal band, because of their accessibility, and I do not just mean because Serj has a gorgeous voice, or because the music is somewhat less frantic than that of the likes of Strapping Young Lad, or Brain Drill. The intent of many of their songs is so clear from the lyrics and the delivery of those lyrics, that one can access that intent with less psychological gymnastics than would be required to decrypt the meaning behind the lyrics of some other, less approchable bands. That accessibility however, takes nothing away from the fact that they are a stellar band, an amazing live act, and a band that, all things being equal, ought to live in the memory till well after they, myself, and all of us have passed on from this life.

My only gripe with them is that one of the members of the band, the bass player if I recall correctly, bashed one of the guitarists from Mastadon over the head with a bottle, which for him meant that he had to re-learn guitar, because the bottle impact actually damaged his brain quite badly. I mean, we are not talking about wearing a bib and thinking that everyone is made of spandex badly, but still... pretty grim.

None the less, as a band, they get the big thumbs up from me! And so do you OP!

I thought you said your hubby was into metal.. Yet you talk about that whimpering nonsense that masquerades as music, system of a dopey bunch.

If they want to play politics, do what the bald git from midnight oil did, and get into politics. Nothing worse that university pratt metal. "Hurrah Im singing about politics I'm cool and edgy and all the intelligent emo kids love me let me sing about prisons!"

I need to listen to this now to clear my mind of that god awful warbling that passes for singing from this dismal quartet of armenians.



whew, thats better...

Don't call soad metal. It's like calling justing beiber music.

Okay guys, I knew there was a chance I'd get a little "flaming" for this since I put it in the "Music" forum and I also knew that those of you who were regulars on this forum would definitely know System lol!

I have heard/own everything from S.O.A.D. up until their tragic breakup... and then I heard/own everything Serj did solo as well. Hubby and I have been very out of the loop since about mid-2010, just got internet back 2 months ago (so of course I came straight back to ATS), before that we used our smartphones, but we didn't utilize our smartphones ha ha. I didn't even know System got back together (AWESOME btw!!) until I was putting this thread together.

On that note, the reason for creating this thread is that I have been very active on ATS the past couple weeks and participating heavily in threads about the D.C. events, Syria, Gov shutdown and Comet ISON. This thread was more for the people I have been connecting with in those threads, knowing many of them had never hears System simply because they would never give metal a chance (even though for some reason S.O.A.D. doesn't feel like that for me). I am still not a metal fan and even uncovering the depths of their lyrics doesn't seem to change my lack of desire to avoid the rage I feel in the music of other metal bands... sorry, no offence intended guys.

And yes, I know these are 3 of their most famous tunes and I am very familiar with "BOOM". Even though these are 3 very popular songs, they fit and are what popped into my head so that is why I featured them in my post. Plus it gave me an excuse to be a 37 yr old mom who spent her day off baking muffins, starting the crock-pot and jamming while I posted on my conspiracy theory message board.

Side note: no plants were harmed in the making of my living room mosh pit, unfortunately the cat was not so lucky

reply to post by winofiend


Hey winofiend, my hubby has all the other "metal" garbage, Tool, Rage, NIN, Sepatura (sp), etc he even has some Gwar, but he knows my disdain for said music and thats why he introduced me to System... he knew I would stomach them much better and he was right. I will still choose to listen to Bieber over Tool any day of the week... just sayin'