System Of A Down‘s “Chop Suey!” has been certified Diamond by the RIAA, their first single to reach 10 million units.
System Of A Down have their first Diamond single. The Recording Industry Association of America certified “Chop Suey!” at 10 million units on Friday, part of a wave of certifications that lifted almost every track on Toxicity.
The timing is not accidental. Toxicity turns 25 next Friday, on 4 September.
Diamond status counts sales, downloads and streams together, and the RIAA’s list of Diamond-certified singles runs well past a hundred entries. Almost none of them are heavy.
When you scan it for rock or metal, the field thins out fast: AC/DC‘s “Thunderstruck“, Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit“, Linkin Park‘s “In The End” and now “Chop Suey!“
Metallica‘s Metallica is Double Diamond as an album, but not one of its five singles has crossed the line on its own. “Enter Sandman” stops at 9x Platinum. That gap says something about how metal has always sold: by the record, not the song. “Chop Suey!” is the exception rather than a sign of any wider shift.
The Full Certification Wave
Announced 28 August:
- Diamond – “Chop Suey!”
- 7x Platinum – Toxicity (album)
- 6x Platinum – “Toxicity” (single)
- 4x Platinum – “Aerials”
- Platinum – “Prison Song”
- Gold – “ATWA”, “Deer Dance”, “Forest”, “Needles”, “Psycho”
The album’s move to seven million is its first update since July 2022, when it reached six.
Daron Malakian wrote the music and shares the lyric credit with Serj Tankian. Rick Rubin produced with Malakian at Cello Studios in Hollywood, and it went out on 13 August 2001, three weeks ahead of the album.
It carried a different title during recording and was changed before release to avoid broadcast problems. Marcos Siega directed the video, shot in a parking lot with the band playing to a crowd.
On paper it was not an obvious hit, it peaked at 76 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it reached the top ten on both Mainstream Rock and Alternative, took a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance in 2002, and Rolling Stone placed it 37th on its list of the 100 greatest metal songs in 2023.
Toxicity arrived on 4 September 2001 through American Recordings and Columbia, entered the Billboard 200 at number one with 220,000 copies in its first week, and was still there during the week of the September 11 attacks. It also topped the Canadian chart and reached number 13 in the UK.
All three of its singles charted on the Hot 100, which was unusual for a metal record that made no concession to pop radio. “Aerials“, the last of them, went to number one on both Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock.
Tankian, Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan have kept the album in front of audiences without releasing a new one. Their 2025 “Wake Up!” stadium run through Latin America and North America leaned heavily on it, and the European leg this year is built on the same songs.
