It's about time we talk about SOAD's heavy metal grail, Aerials
September of this year marked the 25th anniversary of System of A Down’s essential album Toxicity, less than a week before 9/11. Prison Song is one of those defining moments during the peak of the prison industrial complex, and the war on drugs and a looming police state were things that people could feel in the air. SOAD distilled the fear and paranoia of the dystopian 21st century in a huge way. I could write so much on this album because of all of the lyrics and the rebuke of corporate takeovers, commercialism, war, and drug culture, but I wanted to take this time to focus on one song in particular because it is simply one of the best pieces of heavy metal songwriting, and that is the final (before the no longer hidden track) song off of Toxicity, Aerials.
Aerials is unlike the rest of the album, which primarily features frenzied riffs and unhinged vocal performances. It becomes a very serious message that I want to dive into today.
The message might get lost in the crushing guitar riffs and booming double bass drums, but this is an especially unique song. While TOOL manage to pull off what everyone nowadays expects of them with meticulous and almost nauseating esoteric words and imagery to technically perfect instrumentation, System of A Down with all of their frenetic and manic energy and societal protest metal pull off something unexpected and extraordinary with Aerials, which comes as a sucker punch in the gut and a sobering climax to an otherwise speed metal protest album. Their effortless transition to this song that’s unlike the rest and their achievement with Aerials is, to put it bluntly, unmatched in the heavy metal genre, and it is achieved with the most basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus song structure that makes it seem unassuming.
The song opens with low and slow-moving cellos that are cautious and waiting. Pretty soon, the repeated guitar plucking that walks up the fretboard is a meditative reverberation that moves like liquid. It is ethereal and so on point for the song we are about to hear. After the cellos rise to meet the guitar, the bass drums come from under the mix and blast the song into the first refrain, as Serj Tankian, SOAD's guitarist and lead co-vocalist, soars above the mix and rains jewels of wisdom down upon us.
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 wanna play
Always wanna go, but you never wanna stay
And we are the ones that wanna choose
Always wanna play but you never wanna lose
Aerials in the sky
When you lose small mind, you free your life
This entire first section, which is the verse and chorus, is so loaded that we'll have to take this piece by piece:
Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river
And one again after the fall
What is the waterfall motif? The togetherness and the subsequent separation followed by the final reunion? Water and rivers have long been symbols of life, as water is the life giver and all things need a source of water (except tardigrades). All civilizations dating back to the dawn of man were settled along waterways. Water is the common denominator of life.
The timing of life as the waterfall motif is unique in how it's described, with being one in the river and then one again after the fall. This implies that the oneness comes before and after the fall, the spiritual place that we all belong to that we ultimately return to, and that life is, as it’s being described here, the fall itself.
Fall is another loaded term. What else could this word allude to? The fall of man comes to mind. Being one and together again after the fall of man and after our manmade systems and walls crumble and fall away, which brings us back to our purest form of existence is enough to make those who are in power sweat bullets. Fall is also the feeling of being untethered, with nothing solid to grasp on to. It can mean the futile attempts of people to secure their lives in the worldy things that eventually all falls away in the end.
Swimming through the void, we hear the word
We lose ourselves, but we find it all
Swimming through the void, or the lost world we all or in, or the darkness, we hear the Word. The gospel of John opens with the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” While we are trying to make our way through the dark, we hear the Word. God makes Himself present while we are in the void.
We lose ourselves, or our selves, the personal construct, while we find it all, or in other words, everything, including the meaning of all things and complete total understanding. It's fair to say that we lose ourselves to achieve Oneness with God and finally discover all that was previously unknowable.
Serj has an operatic style to his voice that stands out amongst all of his peers and this has to be the perfect song in System’s discography that shows it. It's wild to even think that his singing here and in other songs reminds me of Freddie Mercury, but hell, with his performance in Aerials, this is heavy metal operating on a new plane of existence. It just gives me the chills.
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 wanna play
Always wanna go, but you never wanna stay
And we are the ones that wanna choose
Always wanna play but you never wanna lose
Oh