System Of A Down’s Shavo Odadjian has opened up about his shelved collaboration with KoRn‘s Jonathan Davis.
The legendary metal band’s bassist and member of Seven Hours After Violet discussed why he decided to not release his joint track with the KoRn vocalist while appearing as a guest on the Las Vegas radio station KOMP 92.3.
As Blabbermouth notes, Odadjian had reported back in April 2023 that the song would be released as part of Seven Hours After Violet’s self-titled debut LP. However, upon its release on October 11 2024, the song was not featured on the album’s tracklist.
“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. 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,” Odadjian told the radio station host Sylvia.
He continued: “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,” Shavo explained. “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. That song actually became ‘Paradise’, the first Seven Hours After Violet single.
“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. That happens in art. Let’s say you’re a painter. I’m sure you paint a lot of paintings. You don’t release them all. You keep some to yourself.”
Previously speaking to SNSMix.com last month, Odadjian explained that the original idea for Seven Hours After Violet was to be “like a DJ Khaled of rock” which would have seen the group “get a bunch of features” from different famous vocalists including Davis.
“What happened was the Seven Hours After Violet music became really interesting and I started wanting to play this live,” he said. “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?” he said.
He also explained that upon the realisation that the group was actually a full on band, they had tried to rework the collab track so that Davis’ vocals only appeared during the chorus but noticed that it ended up not sounding right.
“The changed version wasn’t as good as it should be, because I think Jonathan is amazing,” Odadjian said. “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.”
In other news, System Of A Down recently vowed to “drastically” switch up the setlists for their upcoming 2025 tour.
Odadjian previously said that these shows are meant to “test the waters” following years of one-off shows. “The relationships were not as great as they are now. It’s just everybody wasn’t on the same page. We’ve been talking. Everything’s great, knock on wood. Everyone’s happy,” he told SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk in January.