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Shavo Odadjian is best known for his role in System of a Down, but the bassist is also a member of another band called Seven Hours After Violet. Back in 2023, he teased a collab with Korn frontman Jonathan Davis but when Seven Hours After Violet's debut album came out in October 2024, Davis' name was missing from the tracklist.
In a new interview, Odadjian explained why they ended up shelving the song despite its impressive feature. “Morgoth [real name Michael Montoya – and guitarist of Seven Hours After Violet] had a chorus he had sang for [Davis] a while back. ‘Cause he produces a lot of bands, and he’s worked with Jonathan Davis," he recalled in a new interview. "And he’s, like, ‘Let’s write a song around this and then play it for him and see if he digs it.’ And it just didn’t work out well. But at the time when I announced that [Jonathan was going to be making a guest appearance on the album], we were making that song and it was still gonna be a record filled with features. We weren’t gonna get our own singer, we weren’t gonna have our own band. It was gonna be an album of my music with featured vocalists on there from around the planet.”
“If we do work together, if we do bring Jonathan Davis in, I want him to work on this with us, not just have a part that he’s done 10 years ago and have that regurgitated,” Odadjian added. “So that’s what it was. It was nothing on him. He’s amazing. We’re friends. I love Jonathan. So it’s, like, we can work together any day, any time. And we will."
Even though the feature didn't end up happening, the song still made it onto the album. "That song actually became ‘Paradise’, the first Seven Hours After Violet single," Odadjian revealed. “He was on the chorus of that, and it was totally different. It was the same riff, but it was a different vibe of song. I don’t think he dug it. Now listening back, it was premature. It was something we were wanting to do. I shouldn’t have announced it. It was my bad. Because I was so excited — I was excited at the time… It wasn’t what it should be. When it’s right, you know it’s right. And it didn’t feel right to any one of us."
As for System of a Down, the band's gearing up for some big shows this summer and Odadjian recently revealed what fans could expect from them.