In the beginning, Sixx:A.M. was a passion project for Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx, serving as an outlet to record a companion soundtrack for his memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” which became a New York Times bestseller.
Unexpectedly, the musical component also gained traction. The lead single from “The Heroin Diaries” soundtrack, “Life is Beautiful,” became a Top 5 hit on rock radio, sparking a series of eleven similarly successful tracks. The group, which also includes vocalist James Michael and guitarist DJ Ashba, released a total of five albums before entering a period of inactivity and announcing a hiatus in 2021.
Now, they are revisiting their past work with the release of “Prayers for the Damned & Blessed” on June 6. The collection, available on collector’s vinyl and streaming platforms, combines the two albums they released in 2016, “Prayers for the Damned” and “Prayers for the Blessed,” with additional bonus tracks.
“We knew from the outset that we were going to do two records,” James Michael said in an interview with UCR, available on the UCR Podcast. “It was something we had discussed with the label, and they liked the idea. We felt it was a bold move. So when we started writing songs, we were literally writing for two albums. But we’d write a song and then have to determine if it was going on ‘Blessed’ or ‘Damned.’ Where does it fit into the storyline?”
He continued, “That was fun, but we knew from the beginning it was going to be two albums, and it was quite a daunting task because we were also touring at the time. That was a lot of music for us to have to write,” he admitted. “About halfway through, we thought, ‘What have we gotten ourselves into? Maybe we bit off more than we can chew.’ But in the end, we just kept writing songs until we felt we had the right collection, and there was an arc to it.”
For Michael, the release of these two albums marked an important transition. “We were a touring band at that point. When we were writing songs, we had a clearer idea of how they would translate live, and we made adjustments based on what we thought would work well live,” he said. “On the first three records, we didn’t have that. We had toured some, but those were more studio conceptual albums. I feel like ‘Blessed’ and ‘Damned’ really reflected a band that had figured out what it was like to be on the road. By then, we had admitted to ourselves that we were a touring band, so it was a different experience.”