"Sex Slaves are the epitome of rock & roll. They have it all. You want attitude? This New York three-piece has it in spades. You want the tunes? Take one listen to any of the songs off their 2005 release Bite Your Tongue or their brand spanking new collection Wasted Angel and you'll be escorting your neck to a chiropractor in short order."

Put away all your other CDs or lend them to friends. You won't be needing them for awhile. Wasted Angel has everything you need to keep your ears happy. Eric 13, Del Cheetah and J/Bomb still bring the rock but this time they're craftier. The song selection is like a well-stocked fridge. You've got a complete balanced aural diet. There was a bit of variance on the previous record but with this one, the boys go into previously uncharted (for them) waters. Ball-bashers like "Long Live the Dead" and "Sssssay What?" are surrounded by stuff like the excellent "Just a Memory" and "Mexico".

I talked with vocalist/guitarist Eric 13 recently, just before the band was to leave for their first European tour.

antiMusic: When I listen to Bite Your Tongue, it sounds like a really, really good club band and then when I listen to Wasted Angel, it sounds like a band that is really going to do something. Like you've guys have taken it to another level. I've read that you recorded this record on the west coast. How come you changed from your east coast home and do you think this affected the sound?

Eric 13: Well, one it wasn't by choice. We switched labels and this was a brand new label. And they said, "Here are some plane tickets and there's an apartment waiting for you on the west coast. We'll pick you up at the airport and we'll give you six months un-interrupted to write the record." So that was kind of hard to pass up. The guy said, I want to remove all financial concerns, all external concerns. He was like I don't want you guys to have to worry about jobs or car payments or whatever. I want you to worry about nothing but art. He said, if there's any failure, it's because you were unable to make good music. And it was a pretty cool idea.

So we said, f**k it. Sure, if you're going to support us for that long, why not. I don't think it affected us as far as sounding California or whatever. We attempted to cling to our roots as much as possible throughout the process….which was not easy. But it was cool to have the freedom to explore any musical idea we wanted and ultimately what ended up on the record was what we thought was the best.

antiMusic: Did you write out any material out there as well or just recorded it?

Eric 13: It was a little bit of both. During the Bite Your Tongue tour we had been writing…actually more towards the tail end of the tour. So there was definitely a bit of a spill-over of material from the Bite Your Tongue era of material that really didn't get addressed during that time. Ultimately, none of that material made it in.

So it was a bit of 50/50 where some of it was written on the east coast and some of it was written in the studio / think-tank environment. Songs like "Beautiful Embrace", "House of a Madman", "Mexico" some of the little more adventurous stuff. Some of the deeper studio production stuff. These were the more west coast type stuff. But I don't really like to phrase it like that --- California influence. That's just where it occurred.

antiMusic: I was actually surprised after I first played the record. I thought it sounded a bit more mature shall we say, than Bite Your Tongue. Would you agree with this assessment?

Eric 13: Definitely. I love that sound. I mean, we're still just as immature in how we act socially (laughs). I love Bite Your Tongue and I'm proud of that record and there's definitely a lot of people that like it. But I definitely have felt that were a lot more capable and had a lot more to say than just some of the simplistic stuff that…not to discount that because there's something to be said about direct translation and literal translations that are not said by people but thought by people. I think that's why a lot of people attached themselves to that record because they thought, "Oh sh*t, that's what I think."

antiMusic: You guys are known as big-time road dogs, I take it most of the material from this record came together on the road or did it come from your little pockets of time in between tours?

Eric 13: It's definitely not in between tours. We spend so much time together it's sickening. That's not the right word. It's silly. But usually when we're off tour for a few weeks…like now, I'm in Philadelphia. Del is in New York and J is off on vacation. We tend to separate for a couple of weeks and are not normally writing together. But that's where our ideas come from. I write a lot of stuff in hotel rooms. I write a lot of stuff in the back of the bus. It was weird…for the summer tour that we just finished, I actually did not bring my acoustic with me. And I regret it now. It gets hard. I could have spent a lot more time in the back of the bus, writing….or even if it was just f**king around. That's how half the songs get written. Just joking around.

antiMusic: How do you guys write on the road? Are you Pro-tools in the van kinds of guys or do you just play it until you remember it and record it back home?

Eric 13: Just acoustic….I do have a little digital audio recorder….a Sony…it looks like an iPod that I keep a lot of my ideas on. But we don't do any full-fledged writing or arranging on the road. It's just for aggregating ideas. Man, we've spent so much time in the studio and wrote so many songs and prepared so much material for this record that I feel like I kind of really milked the well dry. So getting back on the road is great to refill it with experiences, travels and visions and ideas and stuff like that.

antiMusic: The most obvious thing about your band is your phenomenal songwriting ability. I mean "Beautiful Embrace" and "I Was There"… they're both just amazing. Is it easy for you guys or is a long process? Like how many songs did you write for this record?

Eric 13: Well, for this record it was definitely different because we were afforded the financial freedom to not worry about that stuff and there were no time constraints. So we wrote like 50 songs for this record. There were more ideas….you call them starts where you have a riff or a chorus or a line or something. I mean there were close to 100 starts. And of those, about 50 became songs and of which 40 were demoed and 20-25 were like seriously demoed where we made high quality demos. It's funny that we spent more time, money and gear making the demos on this record, we could have made Bite Your Tongue five times over. I do think it's reflected in the record. Obviously the production level is extremely higher and there's a little more depth to it. I ultimately have wished that Bite Your Tongue had sounded like this but we were a newer band, rawer and a lot of the songs lent themselves to being a little more raw and a little more straight-forward. And the songs on this record required it in a way that have a little more production depth.

antiMusic: What's the usual writing process since songs are credited to all three of you. Does one person bring in an idea and you just all jump in or is it pretty much one person brings in an almost complete song and the other guys just help smooth out the bumps?

Eric 13: It's almost always equal. There's about a quarter of the songs, Del will write completely start to finish and bring them in and then we'll touch them up. A quarter of the songs, I will write completely start to finish and bring them in and then we'll touch them up. And then half the songs we write together. There's really no method to the madness. That's just how it seems to come together. And how it ended up on the record is pretty much how it ended up too. "Long Live the Dead", "Ssssay What?" both those songs I pretty much came up with a riff and Del sat down and wrote some lyrics. J came in and said "You know, this is too straightforward. We need a part that kicks it." And those two songs pretty much represent the true core of all three of us contributing and really sounding like us. Where, "I Live at Night" is a song that Del brought in and was pretty much the rough demo he did on his rough four track that he did one night at four in the morning, was identical to how it sounded on the record. Same thing with "Beautiful Embrace". I wrote that in the studio and it's dead on. So some we'll write together and will represent a little piece of Del, a little piece of me.

antiMusic: How did the record come together? What songs did you write first? I know you released "Ssssay What" on last year's EP along with, was it "Long Live the Dead" so they must have been written a while back?

Eric 13: It's kind of weird. We could have released the record back in 2007 but the record back then would have been very different. There were some songs like "I Live at Night", "I Was There", "Fuk 4 Luv", "Memory". Those songs existed for a little while. We already felt like, "Hey there are ready to go. We could put these on a record right now and be stoked." But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because "Ssssay What" and "Long Live the Dead" and "Beautiful Embrace" didn't even exist. So, initially I was a little pissed off at how long it took. Now that the record is out, I feel very proud of it and the response has been very good.

A couple of people have commented that maybe it does sound like a collection of songs. We cover a lot of ground, stylistically, on the album. Which…we thought that when we came out with Bite Your Tongue, and if you look back it doesn't seem nearly as multi-dimensional as Wasted Angel. And at the time we thought, "Oh my god, how are people going to like this record? It's so all over the place." Which is comical now.

antiMusic: Tell us about the lead-off track "I Love the Dead" which is also a video. What came first, the lyrical idea or the music?

Eric 13: There's a great story about that song. We were in our rehearsal studio in California. And we had most of the songs on the record but for like a couple of weeks, I was on this ballad kick and I wrote a couple of different songs…one of them was "Beautiful Embrace", ironically enough. And we had a little sit-down and the guys were kind of like, "What's going on here? You don't wanna write some heavy sh*t?" And I'm like "Well, of course, I do." And I kind of took offense to it. So they said, "OK, cool. Well, let's go out to dinner." And I said, "You guys go ahead. I want to stay in the studio for a minute." So they went out and when they came back, I said, "OK, check out this riff." And I had the opening riff to "Long Live the Dead. " And they were like "Holy sh*t, that's f**king killer." And I said "I've got this title kicking around, too…"Long Live the Dead". They were literally just coming in through the door and they jumped behind the bass and the drum kit and we cranked out the rest of the song in like one recording session. And when we were done, we looked at each other and said, "This is the new opening track of the record." We knew we had it right there.

antiMusic: "You guys have so many great songs but I can only imagine that you start your set Say What"? There is so much energy in there. Did you write that with the live set in mind?

Eric 13: Yes and no. I mean we write a lot of songs. I've got a little pile of about 20 songs that were in contention for the record and I listen to them sometimes and go, "How is it that these are not on the f**king record", you know? But it would have been a lot different record. It would have been a little softer. But we had these extra songs and they were killer and we thought they would have been great and definitely deserved to be heard. But we just wanted to make a little stronger statement. We wanted it to be a little nastier. And that was really part of why that song is on there.

antiMusic: Part of the reason I thought the record sounded a bit evolved was songs like "Just a Memory" and "Mexico". Tell us about writing "Memory" – which has just an unbelievable bridge by the way. It sounds like you were in an introspective mood that day.

Eric 13: I don't know what to say for that song. I feel like the talk is cheap on that song. It kind of speaks for itself. It's a song that I'm really, really proud of. It's one of my favorite songs that I've ever written. And it was one of the first songs written for the record. But it was always kind of lying below the radar. And everyone that heard the song in its demo form, just really attached to that song. And we just kind of said "This has to be on the record. We have to take a Sex Slaves stab at this song." And I couldn't be any happier about how it turned out. I mean the writing process --- the song was written start to finish in one hour and that's exactly how it turned out. It was just one of those songs. There is a good story behind the record, but it's too good to give up (laughs).

antiMusic: What about "Mexico" – excellent guitar sound on that. True story?

Eric 13: They're all true stories. I don't want to let too much out of the bag (laughs) but it's a song that's never been played by the Sex Slaves. It's like a strict studio song that came together… Del had brought a demo that had three songs on it that he had written and was super high on. He was like "This is the NEXT song. And this one is so killer." And then he gave us "Mexico" as a throw-away. He said, "Oh yeah, I've got this on the side too." And I instantly attached myself to that song. And I was like, "Can I please sing this song?" And he was offended that we didn't really like his other songs. And the engineer that we worked with really put in a lot of time honing that guitar tone. And vocally….we pulled in a lot of late nights on that song. And we never really played it once as a full band. It was a process. And it almost didn't make the record. And I'm glad it did because a lot of people have been really liking that song.

antiMusic: "Cheap Imitation" is one of those Sex Slaves songs when you first hear it. Was this fiction or was this written about somebody in particular?

Eric 13: That's definitely a true story (sinister laugh)

antiMusic: Has the person involved heard it?

Eric 13: (pause) Definitely (laughs).

antiMusic: Possibly my favorite track, although I love the entire record is "I Live at Night". It's got one of those choruses that sticks in your head forever. Plus I love that note that you hold onto near the end. Just excellent!! Anything you can tell us about writing / recording that?

Eric 13: Yeah, I think that's the best song that Del ever wrote. And I hope he writes an even better one next go around. (laughs) It's just a beautiful song. That's another one that I'm glad that he wrote it, for me to sing. I'm lucky in the regard that we can write songs and we attempt to choose who sings what parts based on what's good for the song and not out of ego, which takes a lot of discipline. We do have some arguments in the studio about who gets to do what sometimes and when we cast that song, I'm just glad that I got to sing that one. It's one of the ones that I really love to do live and it was a gift for me as a singer that Del bestowed upon me and J really. That's how I feel about that one.

antiMusic: I thought the sound of the record was a bit different this time out. The guitar seemed a bit more up front and Del was not as prominent. Do you agree with that?

Eric 13: Well, I would disagree that his bass was not as prominent because in the mixes he certainly made sure to turn it up. (laughs) But I think we had logged a lot of studio time and we were very lucky to work with a lot of very experience people. Like even in the demo process of that record, we worked with some pretty heavy hitters. Sh*t, we even worked with Mike Clink at one point. We all know who he is. For a moment there, he was slated to produce our record and for one reason or another, it didn't work out but we were bouncing ideas off Mike Clink. We were bouncing ideas off the guys from Sugar Ray. One of those guys actually produced a track that didn't make the record. Those guys are such amazing musicians. We worked with guys from Orgy. Amir actually produced "Nothing Like It". But we had worked with him on a couple of songs and he's got a lot of studio knowledge. And when you spend hours in the studio with these guys who have Top 10 singles, platinum records …it rubs off on you. I spent a lot of time in the vocal booth and was able to explore a lot of different stuff. So I think that is reflected. I think that we are a lot more experienced. I mean, Bite Your Tongue….we didn't know what the f**k we were doing.

antiMusic: Del told me last time that the session for "Thank God For Jack Daniels" was a real party atmosphere with a bunch of people in the studio and ended with some drunken chick puking into the expensive studio mike. Any real memorable events happen during the recording of this record?

Eric 13: Oh man. (laughs) This could be a separate four hour interview. (laughs) Oh my god….I don't even know where to start. There was so much stupid sh*t. Let's just say YES!

antiMusic: You guys are still an indie band. Was this a conscious decision to go this route when you started, what is it, 6-7 years ago and I guess it's a good one considering the way the major labels have gone. Do you regret at times, not hooking up with a big label and getting some of the perks that go with it?

Eric 13: Yes and no. I am pleased with where we're at. We just try to work hard and put out songs that I'm proud of. But a little more exposure wouldn't hurt.

antiMusic: Unless I'm wrong, I haven't heard anything about a manager. Do you ever get overwhelmed managing the business end of things as well as being the client?

Eric 13: Yeah. Yeah. All the time. (sigh) But good help is hard to find.

antiMusic: You're going to Europe in a few weeks. I've read that you've never gone over there. Is that right? Have you had a lot of interest from over there recently? What are your expectations?

Eric 13: No, we've never been over there. I will admit that my expectations are fairly high because, for whatever reason it is, we sell a lot of merch as well as our albums in Europe. And there seems to be a lot of good word of mouth buzz over there which really, is the greatest thing you can ask for. Sweden really seems to have a killer rock scene as does Germany. It seems like the kind of place that is open to the kind of music that we're doing. I like to think that we're going to deliver them something that they're really going to enjoy. So I think it seems like a really good match. People say we're going to do real well. And it's people who I respect….other bands who have been over there and friends of mine who say "Oh man, they're really going to love the Sex Slaves", so I really hope that's going to be the case.

antiMusic: You've got a lot of different sides to you. You've got some almost punk-like songs mixed in with some crunchy stuff on top of your straight-ahead rock material. How do you choose touring partners or venues?

Eric 13: Money talks (laughs). Actually I hate to put it in those terms because that's not we're about…at all!!!! But there's a harsh reality of making a living. We're opportunistic is the best way to put it. We want to place as many places for as many people as we can. That's all we're trying to do.

antiMusic: I read a post somewhere that mentioned you doing solo shows. Do you squeeze those in very often? What kind of stuff do you play?

Eric 13: I play a mostly heavy, majority of Sex Slave material broken down, which gets a pretty cool response. I like to do real intimate shows. I usually places like around Philly and New York where people really know the songs so it turns into one big sing-along. I do a bunch of covers. And I've got some other material, outlaw country-style stuff in the vein of somewhere between Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. They're songs about being on the road and that sort of thing. People seem to dig em, so I can't complain.

antiMusic: Tell us the Eric 13 story. What were you doing pre-Sex Slaves; how long have you been playing and how did you meet the other guys?

Eric 13: You know, I come from a family of rock & rollers, so it's a pretty transition. My dad will tell me a story of him listening to Led Zeppelin II when I was a baby and sitting back and listening to the record all the way through and I would just sleep right through it. So I think it's just ingrained in me. Before Sex Slaves, it was all just practice. And I think all the influences and the other bands that I was in led me to finally put a stake in the ground and say "Hey. This is what I got to say."

antiMusic: If you would, please fill in the rest of these couple of sentences. My first guitar was a…

Eric 13: Gibson SG.

antiMusic: How old were you when you got it?

Eric 13: Nine years old.

antiMusic: Wow. A little kid with a Tony Iommi guitar.

Eric 13: Yeah, well I was equally influenced by Iommi and Angus at the time.

antiMusic: My first gig was at…

Eric 13: Sixth Grade talent show. I did "Crazy Train".

antiMusic: I met my first groupie at…

Eric 13: Sixth Grade talent show (laughs)

antiMusic: You guys definitely seem to attract the ladies. Ever had any problems with jealous boyfriends or are you out of town too quickly?

Eric 13: Oh boy (laughs). Let's just say it's always good to have a big dude in your crew.

antiMusic: Has the name of the band ever been a problem in terms of club owners not wanting to put it on a marquee or from radio, etc?

Eric 13: Ironically, three days ago it was (laughs). I forget where we were now. It was before Cincinnati. Anyway, we were on the marquee and some local business owners complained. It was one of those venues that's in a shopping centre. And it was a big ass venue too. It seated like 800 people. Anyway the businesses complained and the police had to come and force them to take it down, which was kind of funny. I wish we could have video-taped that. It would have been great on our website.

antiMusic: Anything else about the record or the band that I didn't ask you that you wanted to mention?

Eric 13: I'd just love for everyone to give it a listen. That's all I can ask. Don't be afraid to support local artists. Buy a copy off of iTunes. Please don't burn it!!!! And let us know what you think.

Morley and antiMusic thank Eric for taking time out for this interview.