Serj Tankian: Empty Walls Meaning

Song Released: 2007

Empty Walls Lyrics

Your empty walls,
Your empty walls,

Pretentious attention,
Dismissive apprehension,
Don't waste your time,
On coffins today,
When we decline,
From the confines of our mind,
Don't waste your time,
On coffins today...

Don't you see...

1. anonymous

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   Jan 23rd 2011 !⃝

   It is referencing that war is childish and stupid. If you see that the kids reacted the war and 9/11 showing how stupid it was. In the beginning he says why waste your time on coffins it is stating that dying in war is pointless and the war in Iraq is stupid and should just end.
2. anonymous

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   Jan 23rd 2011 !⃝

   It is referencing that war is childish and stupid. If you see that the kids reacted the war and 9/11 showing how stupid it was.
3. anonymous

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   Jan 5th 2011 !⃝

   well its not about armenian genocide as i saw up there. because chop suey was about martydom and armenian genocide. also look at the video its easier to interpret that way
4. anonymous

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   Nov 26th 2010 !⃝

   Might have to do with loved ones he knew in the twin towers during 9/11 .___. It would explain a lot -Rudy
5. anonymous

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   Nov 11th 2010 !⃝

   This song is clearly, as expressed by Serj Tankian as well, about the ban Bush enacted after 911 that did not allow media to show coffins. The bit about the coffins is a direct allusion to bush's ban. The rest falls into place.
6. shadow5

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   Oct 2nd 2010 !⃝

   When Serj says "your empty walls" I think that he means our false pretenses about the world (empty like "empty promises") and then, most of the interpretations I've seen take the statements of "don't wast your time, on coffins today" and "don't you see their bodies burning?" separately. I take them as connected, and I believe that this means "don't buy coffins when there isn't a body left to bury" and this seems to me like a reference to how brutal combat has become now. explosive, destructive, leave none alive. In earlier times there was almost always a body left to bury but now, most deaths seem to end in pieces and so there's not much left to even bury by now and most parts are left to burn in the aftermath. now, going back to "empty walls" it's talking about how insensitive we've become to death and combat, making it a game like it is to the children in the music video. our "false pretense" that I spoke of before is how we view death. we view it as glorius and the reality is, it is horrifying. So much so that many people who witness it are traumatized by it (Vietnam veterans who experienced post-combat trauma are the most common example that I can think of, at no offence to them). and when he says that the burning bodies are desolate and full of yearning he says that the souls and minds inside the bodies still have a will to live and they yearn for it. "dying of anticipation" would be the feeling of anxiety before a battle, the thought of "I may die, but to live I must kill." "choking from intoxication" is pretty straight forward, basically poison gases that are now used in war that would choke soldiers. when he says "I want you to be left behind those empty walls" it sounds like he wants everyone ignorant to the truth but if you keep going he says "told you, to see, from behind those empty walls" which changes the meaning to "see both sides, so that you can truely understand what you are seeing, and what those behind the walls believe." then he says "I loved you yesterday, before you killed my family" which means that he may have loved a people before but they did something that causes him to hate them (killing his family) and the best idea that I can come up with for this is that, before the terroist attacks on 9/11 he may have liked or maybe even loved all of the middle eastern nations but now that we are at war he cannot anymore. In short: this song is about how short-sighted we've become in how we view war and death and he is pleading us to open our eyes.
7. anonymous

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   Sep 15th 2010 !⃝

   if you would notice,
   the airplane was supposed to be aimed at the runway to land.
   things happen and some war breaks out
8. anonymous

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   Jul 9th 2010 !⃝

   The song shows that our children think war is a game. we make toy guns and swords when in reality the idea of a gun or knife/sword is horrifying, they are designed to destroy lives and countries... By empty walls he means our lives and our ignorance to the horrors of war, and body burning is just what he says, bodies burning people killed and we fail to see that war on any scale is evil and horrible but we make games about it and songs and toys.
9. bcinque

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   Jun 23rd 2010 !⃝

   I felt that the walls were the literal walls around the Palestinian territories and that this was more about the Palestinian Israeli conflict.
10. badfish32

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    May 18th 2010 !⃝

    The children represent the fact that the children that are playing war can be so innocent but grow up to do evil things like fight in the army and kill.
11. anonymous

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    Apr 29th 2010 !⃝

    dude it is talking about the twin towers come now in the usa when they dont waste your time on the coffins today means they cant fine the bodies in the towers so there is no point of the coffins the dont you see see their bodies burning dying of anticipation choking from intoxication mean they are buring in the there and dieing from the fums from the smoke from the fire. god you guys are dum.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
12. sugar36

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    Apr 18th 2010 !⃝

    A bit of the lyrics is wrong it's
    'I loved you
    yesterday
    before you
    killed my family'
    
    I think it points to all wars,but that part in particular points to the Armenian Genocide...it all points to the war events (9/11=the toy plane crashing into blocks) the Iraq war (kids breaking down door and 'killing' the child inside)
    I might be wrong....but that's my opinion.
13. anonymous

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    Apr 13th 2010 !⃝

    I got an entirely different perspection. First of all, the children represent what we are passing down to our decendance. You know like they see violance and they think that thats the best solution to things.
    Anywho, the two towers at the starting were representing, I'm guessing, the twin towers. I could be wrong on that.
    I also think that 'I want you to be behind those emty walls' is all about how to isolate our children from violance. Again, not entirely sure.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
14. anonymous

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    Feb 19th 2010 !⃝

    It has to do with Iraq, but I also think it has to do with his family because he says "I used to love you yesterday until you killed my family" so from that I can think that he is talking about someone killing his family and burning them all of the dying of anticipation to die and chocking of intoxication of the smoke from the fire, and that he wants the killer put in jail
15. anonymous

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    Jan 22nd 2010 !⃝

    I beleive this song is more of a protest of the fight after a certain poit... because it highlights major events in the war such as the World trade centers and the falling of the statue of saddam... but at the same time it protests because there is no longer a reason to be there... We're fighting an "Empty' war based on what are now False pretenses "walls"

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