“I don’t want to seem like I’m riding my own coat-tails”: Inside Shavo Odadjian’s new band, Seven Hours After Violet

Following already-released singles Paradise and Radiance, Seven Hours After Violet have unleashed their latest track, Alive, ahead of the release of their eponymous debut album on October 11.

The band, formed by System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadjian and Winds Of Plague guitarist/producer Michael ‘Morgoth’ Montoya, are currently beavering away in Shavo’s LA studio, readying themselves for their upcoming run of shows, including an appearance at Mayhem Festival in San Bernardino on October 12, alongside Bad Omens and Parkway Drive among many others.

We caught up with Shavo before meeting up with the rest of the band – vocalist Taylor Barber (Left to Suffer), Alejandro Aranda (Scarypoolparty) and drummer Josh Johnson (Winds Of Plague) – to find out exactly what he and his mates have been up to. Satisfyingly, the rehearsal studio has the mess of a place that's being properly used.

“It’s kind of dark and dim. I kept it that way for a reason, because there's soul involved, right? There's spirituality involved,” Shavo tells us. “When we come in here, it's used, and there's energy in here, it's what you feel in here. When you write music you feel like you transcend to other places, and I think you capture energy and vibes and vibrations.”

Buzzing as he talks at length about the new band, he's self-evidently happy to be doing something heavy again, with his other projects not entering the metal world at all. And, he assures us, this is for keeps.

“I’m excited to talk about this. I’m excited for people to hear the actual album, and not just these one-off songs that represent a little piece of the puzzle, but not the full thing. Because we made a record, we didn't just write songs.”

How’s the reaction been to the stuff you’ve put out so far?
“We’ve had great responses so far. The singles are so different to each other. We came out with the heavy-heavy, and then we went to the lightest song on the record, the catchiest. So I would have had a buffer track in the middle, but everyone was like, ‘Throw that one out there, give them a curveball, that’s your style.’ So we did that. This new song is kind of a combination of both styles. And from those three tracks, you'll hear that the record is very diverse. There are songs on there that are just extreme, and then there's songs that are kind of melodic, yet have that extreme sense. A song like Sunrise, I've never heard anything else like it.”

How long have you been working on this?
“This has been in the works for over a year, two years. Probably a year with the music, and then three weeks with vocals, and then another five months mixing, mastering, and then another few months figuring out what's happening and where we're going with it. And then you gotta wait. After that you gotta make videos. You gotta do the art design. You have to wait four weeks for every song to drop. But we've handed everything in to the label. I'm actually supposed to approve all the album artwork today. I actually gave my last notes on the next video, too. I still have a lot to do with the videos. That's something that I’ve been doing since day one with System. It's something that I just know how to do, so I do it.”

You and Morgoth met at a party and decided to hang out and jam, right? Was it as simple as that, realising you had a new band?
“That's exactly what it was. My number is 22. I have 22 is everywhere, I have it tattooed, and my brand is 22 Red. It’s my birthday, my anniversary, I was 22 when System got picked up. My eldest and my middle kid are two years and 22 days apart. Twos are just everywhere! And I met him on February 22, 2022. I was having that little get-together party in Hollywood, ’cause it was the anniversary of the brand, and someone said, ‘Can I invite a friend?’ It was Morgoth.

“He and I started talking, and I found out what he does. I know what I'm good at and how I write music. And it was almost like I manifested him in my head, where I needed someone that knew the music production programs like the back of his hand. He knows how to program beats, which meant I could do what I do best, which is write riffs and arrange. That's my thing. The whole thing immediately felt perfect, you know?”

Did you immediately click when you started bouncing ideas around?
“Yeah, man. He’ll play me a beat in 4/4, 7/8 or whatever, and it just happens, and something comes out. That's how the record was written. I have a hundred riffs I've written for System Of A Down, just in case whenever we do have time to, you know, write, or if we do ever get together again, I have stuff ready to give to the pot. I bring the riffs in, and then Daron [Malakian] helps arrange them, Serj [Tankian] does this thing, John [Dolmayan] does his thing, and boom: it becomes a song. Toxicity was written that way – I wrote the riffs. Daron took it, I didn't think of it for a while, Daron brought it back rearranged, and boom, there it was.

“I kind of needed a person like that to make the beat, to help inspire me to write riffs. I can make my own beats, but I like collaborating. I'm a big collaborator. I like mixing things up. And that’s why Morgoth and I clicked so well. We got together, wrote a couple of tracks, and it all came out so fun and cool, and we had such a blast together, and we both realised we connect.

“The only little hurdle I sometimes had when I was writing was to have it not sound like System. I don't want to sound like System because System exists already. But it’s my style. I was talking to Serj a while back, and he said there's a couple of songs that have that System vibe. And I said I was trying to not, and he's like, ‘Whoa! Why would you run away from that?’ I'm not running away from it. I just don't want to seem like I'm regurgitating it and riding my own coat-tails.”

At what point did you realise you had the beginnings of a new band?
“Morgoth said, ‘Why don't we make a record? You don't have a heavy record. All your side-projects are either hip-hop and electronic, or avant-garde and experimental.’ I've always gone against the grain, and I didn't want to do another heavy record, because System is heavy. I didn't want to repeat myself. But it's been so long, and it felt so good, and I saw it happening so effortlessly, so I was like, ‘Let's do it.’ We didn't say there's a deadline. We just got together three days a week, I gave him a key to my studio and we’d come up with stuff. I’d grab a guitar or bass and I’d jam to his beats. We’d record everything, and then go back and find the stuff we liked, put it together, then it becomes a song and grows from there. I didn't write at home and come back and say, ‘Hey, I have a riff, and I have a song. Like I said – vibrations. It just happened. It felt so good and so exhilarating to be able to do that again. I've been lacking that in my life, because of System not working together, and not being able to express myself musically like that.”

How does it feel to be starting something like this totally from new?
“It's exciting. I knew it was coming. I just didn't know what shape or form it was gonna come in. It just happened, and I took the bull by the horns and I said, ‘Let's go. This is it.’ And I knew it was it because the music was coming out cool.

“Putting the band together was another fun part, because the world was our oyster. Everyone kept saying, ‘Get this guy, get that guy, he's your friend.’ But I didn't want my friends right now. I wanted new people. It's exciting, jamming with not only younger people, but more modern people that are in another world to you. I didn't want anyone in my world. I wanted people with different ideas and different styles in their mix. It was like a puzzle where I didn't know the pieces. But when people came in, it was like, ‘Oh, shit! That picture is now appearing in real time!’”

Is it cool to have a band where you can get to work on stuff whenever you want, without it having to have the significance and planning and being a massive deal like SOAD?
“Oh yeah, man. In System, we have to figure everything out perfectly. It has to be so calculated and it’s all big. There's no calculation here. We're just doing what we want. It feels like the beginning of System, where we just enjoyed going to the studio. It wasn't work, and we did it because we loved it. I couldn't wait to see my friends and show them a new riff and hear what they had, and then play it together and have that little spark. That was exciting in System, and that’s what's happening again.

“It's great, it's inspiring. People inspire each other, right? And I'm open to that. I've always been open. I'm inspired by every member of System. I'm inspired by them, and I can say that to you complete honesty. I'm inspired by [producer] Rick Rubin. I'm inspired even by our management. Everyone has something to offer that I take. I tell my kids that everyone has something to offer. Have an open mind. You don't have to use and take everything and implement it. But take it in, man, because shit goes into your subconscious. And 10 years later you might need something that that person said or did, and you noticed it, and it went in, and it comes out your style. It's kind of like a filter. It goes through the Shavo filter.”

What's with the name of the band?
“Morgoth kept wanting to call the band Shavo. And I said no. I'm a collaborator, and I love being a part of a band. I just don't feel right using my name only. Imagine we have a backdrop where we're playing, and it says ‘Shavo’ in the back, I would feel weird. I'm not Elvis! I'd rather have a band name. So, while we were debating names I thought, ‘Let's make Shavo an acronym and find some cool words we can play off of that has a meaning on its own.’

“I'm not explaining it because I want you to think about it. I want everyone to think, ‘What the fuck is violet? Who is Violet? What's violet? Is it a thing? Is it a person? A colour?’ It's many things, and it's open to your interpretation. That's art. It's a little abstract, but it's also cool.

“We have something coming that we're developing. It’s a series, and it's going to start in the form of a comic book. Each issue will describe a different definition of Violet, and what went down seven hours after. It's all being written as we speak. So this is more than just a band. It's a universe. It's its own universe that's gonna have different things that come out of it. I can’t wait for everyone to hear and see it all. The word I was looking for is creation. That's where I thrive the most in life.”

You’ve got Mayhem lined up. What else is in the pipeline for gigging?
“We have stuff lined up that I can't announce just yet. But soon enough we're gonna announce it. We're getting ready for Mayhem, and then the road to come. We've got a lot of bands who have heard about this and heard a few songs we’ve sent them, and they want us to tour with them. But I want to be strategic. I have a family, I’ve got three kids. I don't want to leave them for seven months a year. We're gonna go out for a month. We're gonna do some special shows. We're gonna do festivals. We're gonna just have fun, not burn ourselves out. I told all the guys when they joined that I want this to be fun. I've never want it to feel like work. If it feels like work then I don't want to do it. It’s meant to be exciting, and if it stops exciting you then it becomes a little mundane and worthless. Hopefully this goes for a long time. I’ve already started the second record.”

You seem pretty jazzed about doing it like that, where there’s nothing resting on the band…
“The worst reason to ever start a band is because you want to make money. That's not gonna happen if you go with that mentality. You're never making money. You gotta be that fucking rare diamond in the rough that gets lucky to be able to do that. System never said, ‘Oh, we're gonna go be the richest band, we're gonna be playing stadiums.’ We just made music. It was fun. If we ever said, ‘We're writing the song for radio,’ it wouldn’t ever have happened. Never write for the radio. Never write to please your audience. Write for yourself. If you love it, then release it, then people can listen to it, and if it's done correctly they'll love it. And if not, who cares? You're an artist. You can create more.

What do you hope people think when they hear the finished record?
“I don't hope anything except that people might like it. If they don't like it, that's all good to me. I love it, and I'm already proud of it, so from here on, to each his own. If you dig it, you dig it. If you don’t, you don't. That's all good. Everyone has their taste. I've learned that in life everyone's got an asshole; everyone's got an opinion. Everyone feels a certain way about things. It's all good. I'm not like those people who are like, ‘If you don't feel like me, I'm angry at you,’ or, ‘If you don't agree with my views, I'm angry at you and you're a dick.’ That's the new way of thinking, and I try to go against that shit. You're a human being, and what makes you original is your thoughts and your style. The way you speak, the way you think, the things you like to eat, to listen to, to read, to watch – that makes you an individual. Everyone's trying to clone each other and say, ‘Man, you like Trump? You like, Harris?’ Who gives a fuck? We're not Idiocracy. We're not these zombies walking in the same order, all believing the same thing, all following the same regime. That would be a boring world. I don't want any part of that.”

Seven Hours After Violet's self-titled album is released on October 11 via 1336/Sumerian

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