If you follow Shavo Odadjian of System of a Down closely online or through any of his various projects and ventures, you might notice the reoccurrence of the number 22. Born on April 22nd, his lucky number has become a symbol for Odadjian, as you can find it adorning his custom Warwick basses, in the title of his lifestyle and marijuana company, 22 Red, and on much of the apparel he wears. So when a chance meeting occurred on 2-22-22 between him and producer/guitarist Michael Montoya, better known as Morgoth (Winds of Plague, MGK, Juice WRLD), he had a good feeling about what could come of it.

The two met at a studio in the days following and immediately wrote a song together, with Odadjian on bass and guitars and Morgoth programming beats. Realizing the potential of their collaboration, Seven Hours After Violet was born, and the two quickly cranked out enough material for an album, which they set to work producing together. With long gaps between System of a Down one-off performances, Odadjian saw this as his opportunity to have his own musical project that he could continually work on. Once the lineup was selected with Taylor Barber on vocals, Morgoth and Alejandro Aranda on guitars, and Josh Johnson on drums, they released their self-titled album debut and performed their first show at the Sirius XM Garage, followed by stops on festival dates.

The heavy metalcore sound of Seven Hours finds Odadjian drop-tuned in lower registers, where his deep frequencies dominate the landscape of the album. In his signature fashion, the 50-year-old bassist loves to add contrast to his compositions, picking high end interludes in bridges, and finding spaces for melodicism in choruses and where they fit. Already writing more material for the project and eyeballing tours for 2025, he has found a spark with his new project that he’s ready to bring to the masses.

How quickly upon working with Morgoth did you realize you wanted to form a band?

Once we met and got into the studio together, we hit it off right away. It was like I found the other half that I needed. I know what I’m good at and I know what I need to seek. I’m always looking for someone to collaborate with who is strong in the things that I’m not. This was perfect. We kept it going and made a few tracks. We were going to sell the tracks to other artists, but we realized that these songs only sound good coming from us. The songs had more of a System twist to them in the beginning and I didn’t really want to give that away. I also wanted a band I could be constantly working on and writing for.

How intentional was it to not make this sound like System?

That was my biggest hurdle with this project. When I’m playing heavy, my riffs kinda do that thing and I can’t help it, because obviously I’ve spent my life writing for System. I’ve been trying to go against the grain for 15 years, so I wanted to do what felt natural. It’s something that Rick Rubin taught me a long time ago, which is that you need to be yourself, do what comes out, and don’t worry about what other people are going to think. If you love it, it’s success. It feels so good to be free like that and do what I do. 

It sounds like these songs came out pretty naturally. 

Within the first day we cranked out a song and then every day we got together after that we’d write another one. We’d go back and forth and put the songs together like puzzle pieces and it just came naturally from the start. Morgoth and I did the whole album together instrumentally where I did all of the bass and about 95% of the guitars, and there are a few things that Morgoth did at home that we’d add on. Both of us produced it and he did more of the beat making, engineering, and production, and I did what I know, which is arranging and picking what’s good and what’s not.

You like writing in the duo format, which is something you do with Daron in System, you’ve done it with RZA, and you did it with North Kingsley. What is it that you like about collaborative writing in pairs?

I love bouncing ideas and hearing someone else’s ideas and augmenting that into something different. That’s something that comes natural to me. I doubt myself when I’m alone more than if I have another artist that I respect in there. Daron does that well with my riffs. I bring some ideas in and whole songs are born from those riffs. With North Kingsley, Sorrow would make beats and then I would write to those beats. I need someone to create something for me to create to and vice versa. I love it both ways—either reacting to someone’s idea or having someone expand on mine. Also, I simply love working with people. That’s a big part of music for me.

What was your process like writing for both bass and guitar for the project?

It was super fast in the beginning. Once we knew we were making a record, we opened up my studio in North Hollywood and came in three days a week for a long time, and we took our time with the songs. We got about 18 songs under our belt and then I picked the best ones and we hashed them out. I focused on the riffs and song structures that made sense for the record and then I’d put my bass and guitar to them.

This music draws from the heavier side of your writing. Are you naturally drawn to writing metal riffs?

If you look at the credits I have for writing System songs it’s usually our heaviest stuff. “Jet Pilot,” “Mildew,” “Dreaming,” “Toxicity,” those are all heavy, driving songs. This melodic thing came out of me with the choruses, and it led to me writing that way a lot more with this band. When we were looking for band members, the vocalist was the toughest because Alejandro, our lead guitar player, is such a great singer. He became our harmony singer. I’ve always loved bands with two singers, including our band, because on top of Serj, Daron (Malakian, guitarist) sings well. Now I have that but in a different way with this band.

How did you go about choosing the members for this band?

Morgoth actually introduced me to all of them. I could’ve gone with older, experienced musicians in my age group, but I felt like I wanted fresh blood and to be more modern. It was part of the whole thinking process of this project. I didn’t want it to be nu metal or classic heavy metal, I wanted it to have that flavor of new and modern. I want to take this forward and make it my thing. There were some big-name musicians who are pretty legendary that we considered, but I didn’t want that. I wanted young and hungry.

What’s it like linking up with drummer Josh Johnson?

Josh and I have been connecting well as a rhythm section. John Dolmayan and I are extremely tight in System and are like yin and yang, where my bass and his kick and snare are locked up. To find a bond with another drummer was tough. But we’re bonding more and more every single time we play together. He’s getting my signals down and we’re learning each other’s feels.

Which basses did you use on the record?

I’ve been playing my Warwick Streamers and the one I used for the album was the first prototype of my signature model. We’ll be releasing my model soon, but I’ve been using the custom ones that Warwick builds me. They’re gradually evolving. The new ones coming have a flat body with Stage 4 insides and all of the bells and whistles. It has a thicker fretboard and it feels different. They’re like the ones that Robert Trujillo plays.

How did you get your tone for the album?

I went straight DI with some effects that Morgoth put on for me. He’s the gear guy. Each track has a little bit of a twist on it. Every song brought a different style and a different tone, so I would track it and then we would layer things on top. Morgoth would experiment with so many options and then I would pick and choose what it needed, depending on how much the bass drives that track.

What alternate tunings are you using?

We started off with what I use for System, which is C-G-C-F, except for the last two records where we were in C#. We started in C, but Morgoth always pushes me to try new things, which I love. He had us drop to B. It sounds very different and it made me write different types of riffs. It caused me to create differently. We wrote about five songs in B and the other six are in C. For live shows I was switching basses, but then I got the new DigiTech pedal (Polyphonic Drop Tune Pitch Shifter) that changes the tuning for you, so I use that now.

“Paradise,” the lead single, is a heavy piece with some deep low end. How did the song come about?

That one was written for Jonathan Davis (Korn). Jonathan and Morgoth had worked together before and there was a part they never used. Morgoth brought it in asked me to write something to it. When we started, we were going to have a revolving door of singers and guests, but we didn’t do that because we wanted to be able to take this band live. The riff has a very chuggy vocal line, like old school Korn. We took out the high and made a grungy, guttural part and I wrote to that. It ended up sounding like something entirely different. Then we wrote the song around it. I wrote the verses to have a System kind of feel to them and Morgoth took that and put the static in there.

How did the bass-centric breakdown come about in the bridge? 

That came out right away when we started writing it. The song got real heavy, so I wanted to drop into a different part and give it my signature feel. I love using the high two strings for bass riffs. It’s my go-to melodic register, so I put it in there to contrast all of the heaviness.

You played two huge Sustem shows recently with Sick New World and Golden Gate Park. What were those performances like?

They were amazing. Any time I play with my guys it is. At the moment we’re doing specific events and shows, which is kinda cool. It’s put us on the map in a different way. Whenever we do it, it’s an event and it’s at a huge space. It’s something we’ve all agreed to, which is rare nowadays. It could lead to other things, I don’t know, but this is what I’ve lived for 30 years. We’ve now been together for three decades, which is insane. We started playing in 1994 and we did our first show at The Roxy in 1995.

Could you have ever imagined back then that System would reach the level it has?

We just did it, we didn’t expect anything. We weren’t thinking, we were simply enjoying it. We didn’t even know there was a metal scene happening. I was managing us for the first two years before we hired the manager we have now. I was doing all of our branding, doing our logos, all the flyers, and trying to get us gigs. I remember what it took to get that first show. I didn’t know anyone in music. I was working at a bank and going to college and writing songs with System of a Down. I was 22-years-old and that was my whole life. Booking our show took so much work. You have no idea what I had to do to land it.

What did that entail? 

In the mornings I was doing wire transfers at First Interstate Bank, going to school in the afternoon, and then rehearsing at night. After every wire transfer I would do, I would pretend like I was doing another wire transfer, but I’d really be calling the Whisky A Go Go, The Roxy, The Viper Room, and The Troubadour. I called every single day and I would tell them that we have a band called System of a Down, and they’d say, Who? Then they’d tell me to send in a demo tape and I told them we didn’t have one because we had no money, and we couldn’t go into a studio to record one. I kept calling every single day over and over and would have the same conversation until they’d hang up on me. Finally, The Roxy got sick of me calling and I made a dent in their mind, and they gave me the number of a promoter who did shows for them who might let us play if we sold tickets. I called him and he said he didn’t know what we sound like, but he got us on a gig. It was May 28th, 1995, and it was a bunch of ska bands. At college I would walk around to get people’s home addresses and phone numbers and I created a mailing list. I hit everybody up. They wanted us to sell 75 tickets, we sold over 150. The dude couldn’t believe it. All these ska bands had 20 people in the audience. We go on as the fourth band and the place goes haywire and all these people were moshing and going crazy. Then we ended and the crowd left, and then it was like 20 people again for the other bands. There was a writer there that night for an outlet called Rock City News and he wrote that something crazy went down in Hollywood last night, and that’s what helped do it for us. From there on we got booked regularly.

The situation with System is obviously a difficult one. What is the vibe between members now?

It feels right, it feels natural, and I love my brothers. We’ve spent 30 years together and we’ve never done anything wrong to each other. I love that we’re doing shows, and I hope it leads to something else. I just didn’t like it when one member was holding everything up without us doing any shows. It’s much better now. I’d rather do four shows a year than zero. It’s special to me. We didn’t become successful just to stop playing; it doesn’t work like that in my head. That’s why I’m doing 7 Hours, so that I can have the best of both worlds. I have System, so we can do the few and far between shows, and now I have 7 Hours where I can focus on it and put a lot of work into it on the daily. I get my cake and eat it too. I’m very grateful for all of it.

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