Sixx:A.M. released Vol.
2 Prayers For The Blessed on
18 November as a companion to April's Vol.
1 Prayers For The Damned. Bassist Nikki Sixx, guitarist DJ Ashba and singer
James Michael sat down with Shinedown's frontman, Brent Smith, in an exclusive
radio special, to discuss the two albums and Sixx:A.M.'s transition as a side
project with no rules to reluctantly becoming a full time band.
A Safe Haven
 |
| The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack - 2007 |
When Life Is
Beautiful blew up on radio in
2007 and reached number two in the US
"Sixx:A.M. was formed as a haven for the three of us who all
had a lot of stuff going on in the music business already", says Michael,
"a place for three guys who like each other as people but also have spent
their entire adult lives and careers navigating the parameters of the music
business. This began as a safe haven for us to basically break any rule we
wanted, do whatever the heck we wanted to do musically, lyrically,
production-wise. It was this gift of freedom that the three of us gave each
other. We weren't trying to do the things we do in our main careers and we've
carried that with us through all of the records and all the years."
Any touring would also come as quite an inconvenience. Sixx was
still full- time with Motley Crue, DJ was five years into his solo career and
various other projects and Michael was writing and producing for The Exies,
Marion Raven, Motley Crue and Scorpions. However, as demand for a tour
increased, Sixx:A.M. reluctantly embarked on a 40 date run with Crue Fest in
the Summer of 2008 - a full year after The
Heroin Diaries Soundtrack had
been released.
"We kicked and screamed about that a lot", begins Sixx,
"we didn't even know how to be a band".
"We were reluctant every step of the way", continues
Michael, "not in a negative way, but we were so proud of the fact that we
weren't a band. We had no rules that normally dictate what a band does. No
obligation to tour. Just do what we wanted. We were always saying: 'Ah that's
cool we can do that because we're not a band'; 'We can do a seven minute song,
because we're not a band'. The transition from that has been very, very
gradual. It's literally been ten years of writing and recording songs and not
doing much touring. Nikki's said this a few times, "We're kind of a band
in reverse."
A New Phase
At the tail end of 2015 however - after nine and a half years and
three albums, which had all broken into the Top 30 of the US charts, with very
minimal accompanied touring - Sixx:A.M. were in a position which would enable
them to become a full time band. Motley Crue were finally retiring with a show
on New Year's Eve following a tediously long farewell tour and DJ was leaving
Guns 'n' Roses (whom he'd been with since 2009), with the impending return of
Slash for the highly anticipated Not In This Lifetime world tour. Sixx explains
how the tide had been turning for quite some time before then though: "Modern
Vintage [2014] was the turning point. DJ was still in GNR, I was still
wrapping up the final tour with Motley Crue and James was between producing. We
said let's go out and do some shows and for a band that prided itself on being
a project, I feel like we found ourselves a little bit."
"We figured the best way to kick-start that next phase of our
career was to give the fans a lot of new music", reveals Michael, "so
we went into the studio a little over a year ago with every intention to write
two full records. What happened was at the half way point, we went out on tour
for a little bit and that led to Vol.
1 having its own stand alone
feel and Vol. 2 was elevated because it was influenced
by this new touring experience, and I feel reflects a whole new Sixx:A.M. It's
interesting to see the evolution from one to the other."
Vol. 2 Prayers For The Blessed
 |
| Vol. 2 Prayers For The Blessed - November 2016 |
Vol. 2 Prayers For The Blessed flaunts a marked improvement from previous works,
with its vast variety of song content and production style. That said, Barbarians, We
Will Not Go Quietly, The Devil's Coming and Wolf
At Your Door from the A side
are essentially a copy and paste job of the singles from Vol. 1;
histrionic, radio-friendly alternative metal that is designed to be performed
in arenas. Closing the A side is Catacombs, a 1:20 instrumental that only
consists of DJ Ashba performing with his adept dexterity with some added whammy
and distortion thrown in for good measure. While this tangent in content is
cool to listen to, it offers nothing to the album and feels like a throw away
track to fill the record - a prime example of the band's attitude to doing what
they want with their creativity.
Now the B side is where Vol.
2 surpasses Vol. 1. The veracious quality of the song
writing and song construction is clear here with the tracks That's Gonna Leave A Scar and Riot
In My Head - which has a whiff of Queen going on in the latter part of
the song.
The B side is also where we find an excellent cover of Badfinger's Without You, made famous by
Harry Nilsson in 1971. Sixx:A.M. could have played it safe and simply done a
standard cover, but instead set out to challenge themselves and thereby wrote
an additional section and solo to beef up the middle of the song. It's difficult
to make a song that's been covered 182 times sound unique, so Sixx explains the
process behind their version of the song: "There's a middle eight that we
wrote into it as a way to break up the song a little bit. We looked at the
Wings concept of Live And Let
Die: it's a little orchestrated. It's dramatic. We wanted to give it a
little bit of meat."
 |
| The combined imagery of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 make for compelling imagery |
Taken as a whole, the combined quality of Vol. 1 and Vol.
2 is far higher than The
Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, This
Is Gonna Hurt and Modern Vintage. Sixx accredits
this to the new experience of simultaneously touring and writing: "Once we
made that commitment to touring we started writing more songs that could be
portrayed in a live environment as well as not losing our original roots. We
wrote Helicopters (Vol. 2) and Rise
Of The Melancholy Empire (Vol. 1) without
knowing if they would be played live, whereas Barbarians, We Will Not Go Quietly (both Vol. 2) and Rise
(Vol. 1) were written with
every intention of being played in a live environment."
Rating - 4/5
You can listen to the full interview with Brent Smith here -
http://sixxammusic.com/news/2016/12/5/new-sixxam-radio-special-hosted-by-shinedowns-brent-smith-available-now
You can also find my review of Vol. 1 Prayers For The Damned here -http://ramblingsofanessexlad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/sixxam-prayers-for-damned-album-review.html
