Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist DJ ASHBA Is Mixing 'Four Different Genres Of Music' With His New Project PYROMANTIC

Former GUNS N' ROSES and current SIXX:A.M. guitarist DJ Ashba spoke to "Vegas Junkeez" about the status of his PYROMANTIC project.

Although he originally formed PYROMANTIC as a collaboration with his SIXX:A.M. bandmate James Michael, the project has since evolved into an Ashba solo thing, with Michael announcing last year that he was stepping away from the band.

"PYROMANTIC is just an awesome project where… basically, what it is is I'm taking four different genres of music — Latin, pop, rock and EDM — and putting it in a blender," Ashba said. "I'm writing and producing the songs. I'm gonna play live with VJ. So it's gonna be me on guitar, just full blown. And then we're gonna feature different singers from different genres of music on the big screens and then videos and everything.

"This has been a two-year-long project," DJ continued. "And it started off in the beginning, me and the singer from SIXX:A.M., James Michael, we had some time off and we started writing like we did. And it eventually evolved, and obviously, it went in a direction, and I pushed it really hard in a direction, and then James kind of got busy and went off [to do] his thing. But it's evolved into this incredible thing over the last two years that's just awesome. And to have congas and horns… And it's very worldly. It's designed to make the body move. It's full-on dance stuff, but it's great."

Calling PYROMANTIC his "number one priority," Ashba said that he is "so, so inspired" by the music that he recorded thus far. "This is everything I've ever wanted to do," he said. "It's kind of like your whole career, you learn all these things, you work with all these people… PYROMANTIC is kind of just my labor of love — it's something I truly wanna do for me — and it's so gratifying to be able to be in a position…

"I've had an incredible career — thank god — but this new thing is just the next chapter," he explained. "It's really special, and it's really a lot of fun. And it's given me the freedom as a songwriter and a producer just to create any style… Basically, I don't have to write for one vocalist or one voice… I can write not only for that, but multiple genres, as long as we keep it within kind of these wide walls that we call PYROMANTIC. It's finally my vision unfiltered. So it's really cool. And I'm excited. I think people are really gonna like it. It's something completely different than I've ever done — something new. It's very creative. And me being a creative person, it's the perfect, perfect thing for me, I guess — the perfect project."

According to Ashba, there are plans for PYROMANTIC to go on tour once the project's first record has been released.

"We're kind of at that stage right now where I've got a shit-ton of songs written," he said. "We're putting the right singers on every song now. And it's exciting. It's two years' worth of hard work. And now we're starting to talk about, 'What is the show gonna look like? What's it gonna be?' And me being a creative person, having an incredible creative team behind me, it's gonna be a lot of fun to finally visually put something together."

SIXX:A.M. recently recorded four new songs. The band, which also features bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer Dustin Steinke, hasn't released any new music in two years and had been on hiatus since 2017.

Photo credit: Michael Pool