SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian releases album with RZA

SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian releases album with RZA

PanARMENIAN.Net - System Of A Down (SOAD) bassist Shavo Odadjian has released a collaborative album with Wu Tang Clan’s RZA, according to Asbarez.

The duo had first announced their project, Achozen (pronounced “a chosen”), in the mid-2000s, around when Odadjian was hyping an ill-fated online music community called urSession. But other than the release of a few tracks (“Deuces,” “Salute/Sacrifice”), the group seemed to fall by the wayside.

Now, eight tracks of the act’s spacey, lushly textured hip-hop are available with the purchase of a limited-edition portable speaker, the Boombotix Boombot Pro.

“We both come from struggle. We come from oppression. I didn’t know Armenia was the first country to accept Christianity as its national religion. And I didn’t know about the Armenian Genocide. I knew about the black man’s struggle in America from slavery to civil rights to whatever we still go through, but you think that that struggle is just personal. You don’t realize, ‘Oh, wow, the Asian brothers went through a struggle. The Armenian brothers went through a struggle. Now the Pakistani and the brothers in the Middle East is going through a lot of struggle based on situations.’ Right? So, I became aware and that helped connect us,” RZA told The Rolling Stone.

“That led to our second song, which is called ‘Fabricated Lies’ and is about the Armenian Genocide. He [Odadjian] gave me a couple of books as well, but I was moved by the struggle enough that I wrote a verse,” he said.

Speaking about the first-ever concert System of A Down played in Armenia on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Odadjian said that it was an emotional experience.

“We played two-and-a-half hours, 37 songs. We played outside to 100,000 people; there was no spot for people to even pit. It was pouring rain, lightning going on. I cried onstage a few times. It was emotional to think that I was that age, that they were like little me’s, my little kids. And we’re in our country, but it’s their country because they live there and we are giving them what they’ve only see on the Internet, live. From grandparents to three-year-olds were there, standing in the rain watching this crazy band. But it was just amazing and I don’t think that it can ever be duplicated unless it was a 200th anniversary. It was perfect. Everything perfectly fell into place,” said Odadjian.

Photo: The Rolling Stone/Greg Watermann
 Top stories
American actor of Armenian descent Eric Bogosian has been cast in the upcoming TV adaptation of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire".
Paris Center Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne will host the screening of Sergei Parajanov’s "Triptych" on December 15.
The creative crew of the Public TV had chosen 13-year-old Malena as a participant of this year's contest.
She called on others to also suspend their accounts over the companies’ failure to tackle hate speech.
Partner news
---