This was System Of A Down's first single from their second album, and their breakout hit. The band feels they evolved a great deal between albums and did things on this that they wouldn't have thought of before. They named the album Toxicity in honor of Los Angeles, which they considered a "Toxic City." They grew up in a bad section and wanted people to know that it wasn't all glamorous.

Literally, 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 is "Suicide," but they had to change the name to make it radio friendly. In the beginning of the song, you hear Serj say "we're rolling suicide." The title is a bit of a play on words - "Suey-cide."

This was climbing the charts when it was silenced by the events of September 11, 2001. Just about every radio station pulled this 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 much too aggressive. The line "I cry when angels deserve to die" was a little too heavy for most program directors. When things settled down, it returned to the airwaves pretty much where it left off, since there weren't many songs released in the weeks after 9/11.

The video 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.

Many interprated this song to be about drug addiction, but it doesn't have the somber tone that many songs about addiction have. The band describes it as "a little quacky." The song was also interpreted to be about how society views death or about Christ.

In fact, Guitarist Daron Malakian stated: "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.'"

Read also:

• Pearl Jam
• The Smashing Pumpkins
• U2 - Octomber