This is Sixx..?

Being involved in the rock/metal music business in the 80s and early 90s, I was by default very familiar with all the bands of the day.

One of those bands that managed to achieve great commercial success was Motley Crue.

While I respected them for their songwriting (it is ridiculously difficult to consistently write good pop-metal songs) and marketing savvy, I was never really enamored with their musicianship.

Jump forward to the present day. While I still occasionally have some nostalgia-laden listening sessions to music from those days, the fact remains that the great majority of those bands are now relegated to the “where are they now” file of musical irrelevance. Along comes a good friend of mine with a recommendation to listen to an album. He told me it was a project called Sixx AM with Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue, so I had a bit of skepticism going in.

Well, let’s just say I was very pleasantly surprised, as the music was something unexpected and fresh. Sixx, along with new bandmates James Michael on vocals and guitar and DJ Ashba on drums and guitar, came up with an album based on Nikki’s book The Heroin Diaries.

Owing to the subject matter, the music is intense, dark and occasionally complex, but with the right amount of melody and hook sprinkled throughout. If you’re looking for Motley Crue part 2, you will be disappointed. It’s more of a heavy ballad crunch circus swimming in syringes and survival with possibly a dash of Pink Floyd and Operation Mindcrime and… well, you get the idea.

After listening to the disc from start to finish, it left me wondering where it came from, and made me ask the question…

“This is Sixx..?”