Shavo Odadjian’s Seven Hours After Violet Started as a Way to Write Songs for Other Artists
System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian recently launched his new side project, Seven Hours After Violet, which is a play off of his name (the first letter of each word spells out SHAV), which took me longer to realize than I’d like to admit. They dropped their first single called “Paradise” last month. They promised this to be the first single off an upcoming album that has yet to be given a release date. Apparently, Odadjian stumbled into the project almost by accident, originally partnering with producer and songwriter Morgoth Beatz for the purpose of writing music to pass on to other artists.
In a recent interview with RIFF Magazine (as transcribed by Blabbermouth) Odadjian talked a little bit about how the project came about:
“It was funny. My number’s 22, so that’s why I have the [cannabis] brand 22Red. So on February 22nd, 2022, we threw a party and the day of the party, I did a live radio show on KROQ here in Los Angeles. And that evening, we were throwing the party for 22Red, but I did that show before and I invited the host to the party. He asked me if he could bring a friend. I said, ‘Sure.’ He brought his friend. It was Morgoth Beatz who ended up being the producer and now my rhythm guitar player in the band and co-songwriter in some of them songs and stuff. So he and I decided we can write music that day together.
“So we exchanged numbers and we got together like a month later, wrote a song, and then we did another one a week later. And then it just became this thing where it was gonna be like one song we were going to sell to another artist, ’cause that’s what he does; he writes a lot of music and he passes it on. But it became this thing. And he mentioned, he’s, like, ‘Man, why don’t you do a Shavo record? Like something with all of the songs that you wrote instead of just one or two songs. These are coming out great.’ And at that point, I wasn’t really thinking about doing my own record like that, ’cause I’ve done so many other projects. And another thing is I’ve never done heavy music outside of SYSTEM. It’s been heavy, but never the same genre. I’ve always tried to stay against the grain, and I’ve done EDM, I’ve done hip-hop, I’ve done rock-metal shit, but I haven’t really just focused on that, which actually is my forte. I close my eyes and it just happens, which is how we did this.”
While songwriting for others is certainly lucrative, it seems like Odadjian is happier to have a full band now instead of passing off the songs to someone else. If you want to catch the band, their debut performance will be at Mayhem Fest in San Bernardino, CA on October 12. Get your tickets here.
