Serj Tankian
Pull a thread
Three Tuesdays in 2001: Iowa, Toxicity and God Hates Us All, 25 Years On
Slipknot, System of a Down and Slayer released records on three consecutive Tuesdays in 2001, exactly seven days apart, and the third one reached stores on the morning of September 11. Under the dates runs one producer, one label, and the distance between #1 and #28.
The Tuesday rule
For most of the CD era, new records in the United States came out on a Tuesday. That is why the sequence below lines up without a gap or an overlap: one heavy record per street date for three weeks running.
Faith No More opening for System of a Down in 2027: the band that made the door and the band that walked through it
Four stadium dates in Australia and New Zealand put Faith No More on before System of a Down. Read the bill as a timeline and it runs backwards: 1990, 1992, 2000, 2021, 2027.
The announcement, and why the order matters
On 27 July 2026, System of a Down and Faith No More announced four stadium shows for early 2027: Accor Stadium in Sydney on 22 January, Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on 27 January, Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on 1 February and Hnry Stadium in Wellington on 7 February. Faith No More is the support act. General sale opened on 31 July. It is System of a Down’s first trip to the region in more than a decade, and Faith No More has not played there since Soundwave in 2015. (Pollstar, TEG Live, Louder)
"Chop Suey!" Is Diamond, and Heavy Music's Entire RIAA Diamond Club Is Five Songs Certified in 30 Months
System of a Down’s 2001 single peaked at #76, got pulled from radio after 9/11 and never sold ten million of anything. On August 28 it became the fifth heavy song ever to hit RIAA Diamond. The other four got there since February 2024. That timing is the whole story.
What Diamond actually counts
Diamond is the RIAA’s ten million mark. For most of its life that meant ten million copies sold, which is why the club was built out of Whitney Houston and Elton John and almost nothing with a distorted guitar in it. Then the RIAA folded downloads and streams into the count, and “ten million units” stopped describing a purchase and started describing a habit. A song can get there now without a physical copy changing hands in years.