Shavo Odadjian - Seven Hours After Violet 'Using the Same Mentality From When System Started Making Music'

One of the metal genre's most distinguished and notable bassists, System Of A Down's incredibly sociable Shavo Odadjian, hasn't allowed inactivity to cease his creative juices from flowing.

With a devoted passion for his craft the birth of his latest musical endeavour, Seven Hours After Violet, came to fruition with a sense of ease - without pushing against the grain - while allowing the process to unfold naturally. As the eminent musician follows a greater sense of 'everything is unfolding as it should', it was the greatest pleasure for me to sit with the man himself and discuss how this project came to be, the dynamics between him and his fellow band members, future plans (including the publishing of a series of comic books) and more.

Watch the full chat below or read on for the best bits.

With a rich history of success within the realm of music, Shavo has achieved far more than most. When probed as to why he would start fresh when he has seemingly already conquered the world of heavy and alternative music, the fifty-year-old bassist expressed "This project began not because I had to do it, because I wanted to do it. There was no timelines, no deadlines, just fun."

This attitude of following the passion and creating music for the love of doing so - rather than for fame and money - seemed to be somewhat contagious as the goateed bassist went on to explain how he managed to attract like-minded individuals to co-create with, explaining that "I believe in spirituality and I feel like it worked that way. Like we put it out into the universe. First, it started with me looking for someone that without even saying it, without even looking, asking anybody, I was in my head looking for someone that could produce beats and I could write, and we could arrange, and we could throw music, and it just happened."

"Morgoth and I met first at a get-together I threw in February of 22. You would look at him and not know that he's such a sweetheart, teddy bear. Morgoth was that piece of the puzzle that I needed to be able to create the way I create."

A collaborative energy between producer Morgoth - also of Winds of Plague fame - and Shavo was soon ignited, with the SOAD icon revealing: "This project happened spur of the moment, on the spot, creating in the studio, locking everything up, looking at it, listening to it, whichever one I like, I keep, I arrange, I write more music to. And that's how it happened. And he was that piece where he could do the beats and all the soundscapes, make it full, put the orchestras on it, put the low end on it, make it modern with my riffs.

So we did that and it took us about a year of getting together, four times a week, jamming a couple hours a day. It worked easy, fun, exciting, not contrived, not trying and didn't try. I like creating. I like doing stuff, so him and I clicked. We started, we went into the lab, we made some music."

Without additional probing, Shavo continues to explain how those humble beginnings of creating music for fun turned into the five-piece metal act it now is by stating "Morgoth suggested, 'Why don't we make a solo Shavo record?' And I'm like, 'Oh, I don't sing. I mean, I can, but I don't, maybe one day though'".

The duo continued to suggest ideas on how they could grow what they had been working on together, with Morgoth proposing, "Why don't we get a bunch of guest vocal features on the record? You know, it's all your music and then every song, a different singer adds their flair to the music."

That idea was eventually shut down by Shavo, reasoning that "You can't take a band on the road if the singers are all different in every song and they already have their own bands. So once the music was all written and recorded, we said, 'Let's find a singer'. So we went through a bunch of people."

At the time, Morgoth had previously worked with Atlanta, Georgia based band Left To Suffer on their recent album Leap of Death, so he was well aware of the capabilities of vocalist Taylor Barber. However, Shavo had his initial doubts about recruiting the deathcore vocalist, stating "I wasn't sure, because I hadn't heard his singing, I had only heard the guttural growls and screams, right? So I said, ''It's great for that, but also, I've written a lot of clean singing parts', you know, I want clean singing." However, the bassist was quickly won over by Barber's talents, revealing, "We sent a song, and I swear he sang in falsetto. He sounded like a high-pitched, perfectly in tune opera. And then, during the same song, he had those low growls. The range was incredible. So we sent him another song, and again, it came back with this big chorus on it. I said, 'okay, now we have a singer.'"

The seasoned musician, who has spent the majority of his lifetime working towards an incredibly successful career in music continued to emphasise the importance of this project being on his terms, stating that "It wasn't supposed to be a band, but it turned into a band. It was supposed to be just us studio making music and releasing it. And because I want to take this on the road because I love to perform as much as I love to make music, but on my terms, like I don't have to go for 10 months. I can go for a month or three weeks. I could go two shows here and two shows there. Do what we do. Just strategic and fun... That's why if it wasn't fun, I would stop it right away."

This 'keeping it fun' mentality is continuously echoed by the quality of friendships that is held between the members of Seven Hours After Violet as Shavo explained the group often shares kind and encouraging sentiments with each other.

When questioned as to whether vocalist Taylor Barber - who seemingly spreads himself thin between Project: Vengeance, Left To Suffer and the many other music ventures that he pursues - would be able to commit to this project fully in order to see it follow the success of System Of A Down, the bassist quickly responded with:

"Dude, we're together every day. This band is the priority right now. We flew Taylor into L.A., he lives in L.A. now. On days we're not working, he can do whatever the hell he wants to do, bro. That's what I love about this. Everyone can do what they want to do whenever they want to do it. But when we are scheduled for shows, we're together. We're a band. This is our band. There's no doing anything else at the moment. You know? It's not like I said you can't. Everyone knows it. Why would you? We have something special here. If at night, after we're done rehearsing and I leave to go home, if he's gonna go and do vocals on someone else's track, feel free, bro, I would love that. We know this is important. We know this is special. It's special to all of us."

Beginning this new band that prospects so much potential triggered Odadjian to reflect upon the humble beginnings of System Of A Down in the 1990's, as he added:

"I'm using the same mentality from when System started making music. We didn't know there was a scene in Hollywood, L.A. happening. We were just happening at the same time. And when we started doing shows, we started noticing there's other bands that are like, doing some heavy shit, and it's coming back, and fans are coming through. And we didn't know it was the birth of nu-metal. We didn't know that. And nu-metal, I say, is not a style, it's an era."

As we continue on to discuss the importance of the time period where nu-metal thrived, Shavo continued to cast his thoughts back to the earlier years of his career as he went on to state, "It started early on with Tool and Rage Against The Machine, they did it before us. Yeah, it was metal sounds with other genres of music. It's called nu-metal because it was metal done differently, and it wasn't genre, it was an era, because everyone did it in their own way."

"Nowadays when people ask me, 'how do you feel about being nu-metal?' I'm like, 'nu-metal is an era', I can't deny that we came out in that era. But we were different metal. Anyways, I've accepted it, I'm not mad at it."

One point of similarity between the humble beginnings of System Of A Down and Seven Hours After Violet is both were very young at the point of inception. With multiple members aged in their 20's and others in their early 30's, the mastermind revealed that recruiting musicians who were still cutting their teeth in the music industry was a calculated decision.

"Once Morgoth and I started working, I said, 'We should have youngins in the band because it will keep us current'. If I wanted to do it, I would have had other people in the band. I know many musicians from my era that would have loved to have been in this band. I wanted to do something where I brought my wisdom and knowledge and experience into a situation with young men who are doing it now, are hungry and know what's happening in the industry. Morgoth is working with all the new bands and he knows exactly what's out there and what's happening."

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When quizzed as to whether it would be more likely to see System Of A Down or Seven Hours After Violet in Australia first, we were simply told "If it was up to me, System would be touring and we'd have albums every two years. This is my project [SHAV], so I'm going to make music and I'm going to tour, but we're not going to do the extensive 10 months a year touring. We're going to do a month here, two weeks there, four weeks there. I have agents around the world that are looking out for cool opportunities for us in the new year. Then, when the new year begins, we're going to jump on a cool tour and head out in America, as well as outside of America."

"I miss being in Australia. I miss going to Europe. I miss going to South America. I miss all of it. I love to travel. I'm the guy that loves touring, even though I have kids and a family now and I would miss them, but we don't have to do it extensively. Also, you're not going to wait too long until the sophomore record!"

Interview by Adam Rice

Seven Hours After Violet's debut album is out Oct 11th via Sumerian Records.
Pre-order/save here

Seven Hours After Violet - Seven Hours After Violet tracklisting

1 Paradise
2 Alive
3 Sunrise
4 Go!
5 Float
6 Glink
7 Cry…. 
8 Abandon
9 Radiance
10 Gloom 
11 Feel