Ask any artist to reveal their most important ingredients for success, and you are guaranteed to find creative freedom near the top of the list. Thus it has proved for Sixx:A.M, a band comprised of Nikki Sixx, DJ Ashba and James Michael have formed a creative collective characterized by a free-spirited, artistically pure approach and genuinely diverse musical influences. That wide-winged philosophy resulted in the band’s third album, the alluringly titled Modern Vintage, which offers both billion-dollar choruses, and nods to great bands from the 70s like Queen, Bowie, T. Rex and Sweet. It is a record that represents the culmination of seven years of collaboration between three friends who, in the beginning, didn’t even really want to start a band…

“This all just formed incredibly organically,” says producer and vocalist James Michael of Sixx: A.M’s initial formation. “I had been working with Nikki on some songs and we got talking about the idea of doing a soundtrack for a film version of what would end up becoming The Heroin Diaries. A couple of years later he called me up and said ‘We’re actually going to publish The Heroin Diaries as a book. How would you feel about doing the soundtrack for a book?!’”