System Of A Down land their first diamond single with Chop Suey!

System Of A Down have their first diamond-certified single. "Chop Suey!" reached 10x platinum with the RIAA on August 28, as part of a wider wave of certifications for their 2001 album Toxicity.

Diamond means 10 million units, counting sales, downloads and streams, and it is a rare mark for anything metal-adjacent. The RIAA's list of diamond digital singles runs well past a hundred songs, but the overwhelming majority are pop, hip-hop and country records.

The hard company on that list is short. AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Linkin Park's "In The End" make up most of it. Metallica's Black Album is double diamond as an album, yet none of its five singles have crossed the line as standalone tracks, with "Enter Sandman" topping out at 9x platinum. Metal has always been a genre built on album sales rather than singles, which is what makes this one an exception.

The streaming numbers track with it. "Chop Suey!" passed a billion Spotify plays in April, well clear of anything else in the band's catalogue. "Toxicity" sits at 668 million, "B.Y.O.B." at 460 million, and "Lonely Day" and "Aerials" around 375 million each.

The rest of the wave was good for the album too. Toxicity climbed to 7x platinum, up from 6x in July 2022; the "Toxicity" single hit 6x platinum and "Aerials" 4x platinum; "Prison Song" earned a standard platinum certification; and "ATWA," "Deer Dance," "Forest," "Needles" and "Psycho" were all certified gold.

It is a good week for the metal and rock end of the certification lists, which more often reward pop, as in the diamond certification for WAP and country, as in an RIAA plaque for Alan Jackson in Nashville.