shavarsh "shavo" odadjian (; born april 22, 1974) is an armenian-american musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music video director, and painter. he is best known as the bassist, backing vocalist and occasional songwriter of the grammy award-winning metal band system of a down. during the band's hiatus from 2006 to 2010, odadjian collaborated with wu-tang clan founder rza on a project called achozen, which contributed a number of songs to the motion picture "babylon a.d." a compilation album was released in 2015. odadjian is also credited with the musical scoring of the film, alongside the rza and hans zimmer. he originally used gibson thunderbird basses, a fender jazz bass, an ibanez btb bass guitar, and a music man stingray, but has since moved on to warwick basses.