Shavo Odadjian Explains Why He Shelved a Seven Hours After Violet Collab with Jonathan Davis

Getting Korn frontman Jonathan Davis to appear on your album would be a pretty big deal for anyone, even a System of the Down side project like Shavo Odadjian’s new band Seven Hours After Violet. But it turns out that Seven Hours After Violet actually had a collaboration with Davis that they didn’t end up putting on the album. So what kept the track from seeing the light of day?

In a recent interview with SNSMix (that was transcribed by Blabbermouth), Odadjian explained that Seven Hours After Violet was originally conceived of as “like a DJ Kahled of rock” with a series of features from guest artists, but it soon became apparent that doing so would create a bunch of songs that are difficult to replicate on tour:

“What happened was the [SEVEN HOURS AFTER VIOLET] music became really interesting and I started wanting to play this live. I was, like, ‘We should play this live,’ and at that point having just features on the record wouldn’t work out because then how do you play live?”

After realizing that Seven Hours After Violet was going to become more than a series of features and more of a real band, an attempt was made to rework the song so that Davis was only featured on the chorus. But, according to Odadjian, that didn’t quite work, either.

“[The changed version] wasn’t as good as it should be, because I think Jonathan is amazing. I even spoke to him [and] we decided if we ever do [another collaboration], we’ll write together, not use something that he already had [recorded] under another rhythm.”

So it remains uncertain if the track will ever get a release in the future, but it seems that the track isn’t right for what Seven Hours After Violet turned out to be.