It's been three years since our last interview with Sebastian Bach, and in light of the UK release of his new solo album, the powerful ‘Angel Down', a record he's quite rightly deeply proud of, it is time to catch up again with the charismatic singer. With Axl Rose as a guest on three songs, Sebastian is very excited to talk about the album and hopes he will be able to come to the UK after his tour in the US with Poison.

On our last interview you mentioned you wanted your next album to be heavier than ‘Slave To The Grind'. Do you think you have achieved that with ‘Angel Down'?

Yes! When I put in ‘Angel Down' and I crank it out loud on a good stereo, it kicks my fucking ass really hard! So, I would have to say yes. But you can't compare a record that was done in 1991 to an album that was made in 2007. It's so different making a record now. ‘Slave To The Grind' is a special record from a certain point in time and sums up that time period. Same with the first Skid Row record. And so far it's looking like ‘Angel Down' is going to be a lot of my fans' favourite CD of this summer. So that's what I'm doing, I'm making new memories. It takes a lot from me to put my name on something and say ‘Okay, it's done. Here it is' and I love the record. When it comes to ‘You Don't Understand' and Axl doing ‘Back In The Saddle', I can't believe what I'm hearing. ‘Stuck Inside' is one of my favourites and there are so many parts of this CD that I just love. I'm glad that it's finally coming out in the UK on July 21st. Domestically in the UK every CD will have a DVD called ‘Roadrage', which is a movie that I made about the recording of ‘Angel Down' and it also has five live songs, the ‘(Love Is) A Bitchslap' video and the Trailer Part Boys. It's a very fun and humorous DVD, very much in the style of the ‘Oh, Say, Can You Scream?', ‘Roadkill' and the ‘Forever Wild' DVDs. Also, ‘Angel Down' is coming out in the UK as a vinyl record on a double gatefold sleeve, with a poster and it's a double sided cover picture disc. I never thought I would see ‘Angel Down' as a record, but it's coming out in the UK in two weeks after the CD/DVD.

At that time of that interview you were working with Zeuss, but now you have used Roy Z as the producer. He's done a brilliant job, but why the change?

I never got to work with Zeuss. I wanted to work him but the time I met him I wasn't ready, actually. Between the time I met you and ‘Angel Down' I worked a lot harder on the songs. So a lot of the writing was done from 2000 to 2007 and also Roy Z co-wrote four songs on the CD. But it's funny though too because now I'm going to work with Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed and that was the reason that I wanted to work with Zeuss in the first place. So for my next project I might be working with Jamey on some music.

I guess this explains the delay in the release of the album. When we spoke you were scheduling to release it in the summer of 2005.

Well, I'm glad I didn't because I didn't have the songs. A lot of the delay had to do with the fact that Spitfire Records went out of business in the middle of us recording and that's who I was signed to, so I had to find a new record label. I had to finish ‘Angel Down' kind of on my own and to make a long story short I got a deal through EMI, which is my own record label Get Off My Bach, and I'm working with these guys from New Jersey, MRV Records. They're right down the street, which is really cool. I get to approve everything and oversee everything that goes out. They also get the records to the stores. And in the UK the album is coming out on DR2 and they're very cool with the packaging and wanting to do a DVD and a record, a gatefold sleeve and all that. I really dig all that stuff. It's going to be great for the fans when you get it. It's going to be high quality stuff.

Guitarist Ralph Santolla is no longer in the band, although one of his compositions, ‘You Bring Me Down', is on the album. Why did he leave?

You'd have to ask Ralph that, but I don't think Ralph knows what he wants. Because Ralph kind of wanted to be back in the band when we went out with Guns N' Roses. He said ‘Hey, man, I'd like to do that tour'. And I'm like ‘Well, no shit! Of course you do! What musician wouldn't want to do that tour?' I've been playing with Bobby [Jarzombek], Metal Mike and Johnny Chromatic for a long time and I don't like changing band members. I only do it if I have to. When Ralph left that was his choice to leave, to join Deicide. He obviously has different musical taste than me. All I know is that the music that I've made has lasted over 20 years and people really like it. So Johnny Chromatic is in the band now and he will be as long as he wants to be.

I read ‘Live & Die' is a song you're particularly proud of.

Vocally, yes. It's very hard to sing and if you want to try to sing along to it, don't hurt yourself! If you listen to it, it goes from the clean sound of my voice to the dirtiest I can go. I go from the clean to the dirty sometimes within one word and to sing it like I heard it in my head it took me three times. It was very challenging. And all the harmonies and the choruses, the outro, the bridge… that's me using my voice in every way I can think of. But right after that is ‘By Your Side' which is another way that I like to use my voice. I really work hard at placing the songs, where they should go in order. A lot of people said ‘You should put ‘By Your Side' third or fourth song'. I tried to do that but it didn't make sense, I don't know why. This is a real album, not just a couple of songs and then other filler songs. Every song is different and shows a different vibe. I'm very happy of how dynamic the record is.

On the last track, ‘Falling Into You', you worked with Desmond Child. How did you get him involved?

That was the first song that we wrote for the record. That happened in the year 2000 when I was in Jeckyl and Hyde on Broadway. Jason Flom – the guy who signed Skid Row and also the one who gave me my solo deal for ‘Angel Down'– was also the guy that put me on Broadway and he came and saw the show. After the show he said ‘Sebastian, I want you to write a song with Desmond Child' and I go ‘Fine!' So they flew me down there and that's the song we wrote, ‘Falling Into You'. We actually wrote it in a different key but Roy Z heard it like that and he was right, that's a very interesting key. I never sang in that before. It's also the first piano ballad that I've ever done on a record. So it's a unique song and I really like how it turned out.

Who wrote the other songs? Did you get any input from Steve DiGeorgio and the rest of the band?

Yes. Steve and I co-wrote ‘Take You Down With Me' and ‘Negative Light'. Metal Mike wrote ‘American Metalhead' and ‘Live & Die'. I co-wrote with Roy Z ‘By Your Side', ‘(Love Is) A Bitchslap', ‘Our Love Is A Lie' and ‘You Don't Understand'. So there's lots of different song writing partners on the CD.

Nice team work!

Well, yeah! That's one of the reasons why Skid Row broke up, because two of the guys, Rachel and Snake, think ‘If I wrote it, it must be good' and I think totally the opposite. I just listen to a song and if it's a good song I don't care who wrote it, it doesn't matter to me. If I wrote it, great. If you wrote it, great. If the fucking bus driver wrote it, great. Who cares? It's my objective to have a great CD and whatever it takes to give the fans a great CD then that's what I'll do. When they would write a song that I didn't think was as good as '18 And Life' or ‘Monkey Business', I would say ‘This isn't ‘18 And Life'' and they would say ‘You're hard to work with! I'm the song writer'. Fuck all that ‘I'm the song writer' shit! It's ridiculous to think like that. You have to be objective. Like I worked on ‘Angel Down' for seven years and I put it in my ipod, I heard it a million times, I made sure that every note was like the way I heard it in my head. And it really is. I can do interviews about it all day because I really do love it and if it was the last CD I ever made, I'd very proud of it. But I'm going to make a ton more CDs, don't worry about that!

What about the lyrics? Is this something you have done with the other guys too?

Every song is different. Some songs I wrote all the words, like ‘You Don't Understand' or ‘By Your Side', and some songs I wrote none. ‘American Metalhead' is Metal Mike. The credits are on the record.

What prompted you to cover Aerosmith's ‘Back In The Saddle'? Is this your statement as you being back with a new album? And also is this you saying you don't need Skid Row to put out a great album?

No, that doesn't have anything to do with it. With the first part of it, yeah, I'm back with a new CD. That was a suggestion of Roy Z. We already had 13 songs done and I didn't want to do any covers on ‘Angel Down' because in the mid 90s I did every fucking tribute record in the world and I'm tired of doing those kind of things. But he said ‘No, dude! You're back and your name is Sebastian Bach and it would be so cool if you came out on stage and sing ‘I'm back, I'm back in the saddle again'. He was right. And to have Axl Rose sing on it is astonishing. For all the Guns N'Roses fans who complain about there not being a new ‘Chinese Democracy' record, and who are waiting for that, in the meantime, go get ‘Angel Down' when it comes out because Axl is singing incredible. He sings three songs on the record - ‘Back In The Saddle', ‘(Love Is) A Bitchslap' and ‘Stuck Inside'. He sounds like he does on ‘Appetite For Destruction', he sounds great. All GN'R fans, you're very welcome. We opened up for the GN'R tour worldwide in 2006 and 2007 and I sing on a song called ‘Sorry' on ‘Chinese Democracy'. When I was finishing up ‘Angel Down' I just asked Axl on a text message ‘Hey, when are you going to sing on my record, dude?' I was just kidding around but he said ‘Anytime. When do you want to do it? Let's do it'. I couldn't believe it and it was that easy. He's a good friend and one of the best singers in the world and it's good if one of your good friends is one of the best singers in the world.

Was he physically in the studio with you?

Yes, absolutely. He came down in his Testarossa Ferrari or whatever it was, and pulled up outside the studio and we had to put security cones around his car because there's no Testarossas in that area of North Hollywood. He came there about 10 at night and we didn't leave the studio until about noon the next day. He sang all three songs and then he came back a week later to listen to them. I'm a very lucky guy, that's for sure.

On this album I noticed that sometimes you sing in a register we are not used to.

I sing higher now than I used to in a lot of the songs, like ‘American Metalhead'. I always try to sing different than I did before. That's the whole point of it.

Why the title ‘Angel Down'? Is it the name of your dad (deceased Canadian artist David Bierk)'s painting, which is the cover of the album?

No, the title of the painting is ‘David Watching' and my dad did it of the statue of David. My dad's name was David, so when he died it became a very haunting image, as if he was watching from heaven. He did the cover of ‘Slave To The Grind' back in 1991. I always liked Iron Maiden's album covers with Eddie; they all kind of fit together and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't use one of my dad's paintings. It's even more heavy now that he's not around. It has more meaning to it, so that's why we did it.

Due to flight connection difficulties, you couldn't make it to Sweden Rock last month. What happened, exactly?

That was horrible and I'm very sorry to all these fans, but I didn't do anything. We played the night before in Oslo and we were on stage at 10pm. There was only one flight from Oslo to Stockholm the next day at 6.50am. We got that flight but they didn't tell us that we had to re-check all of our instruments and luggage when we landed in Stockholm to fly to Ronneby, which was were Sweden Rock was. The airline just said there wasn't enough time for us to make the flight. We did everything we were supposed to do. So we called Sweden Rock explaining they wouldn't let us in the flight and if we could please play later, like at 2pm or something. Our stage time was 1 in the afternoon. Why are we playing 1pm and the last time we played Sweden Rock was at 3 or 4pm? I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense. So they said ‘No, you have to play at 1pm. That's it. You can't go on later'. We are like ‘Would you please let us? They're not letting us come in.' but they said no, so it was out of our control.

Will you be coming to the UK soon to promote the album?

I hope so, but I'm booked up until September in the United States opening for Poison on a tour. The last time in the UK was with Guns N' Roses and Bullet For My Valentine and we sold every ticket in every arena. So I want to come back to the UK with a proper tour because that was one of the greatest tours I've ever done. So I definitely want to come back in a big way.

Is there a chance of a reunion with Skid Row?

No. I don't see any reason to do that at all. Nobody can give me a good reason to do that. Why? So we can pretend it's 20 years ago? To me that's not a good reason.

Have you listened to the two albums Skid Row have put out?

No. Why would I do that? I heard one song on YouTube that said Skid Row, so I thought it was old Skid Row, but it was new. I heard it and I didn't like it very much.

Next week you are going on the road with Poison and Dokken around the States. Are you looking forward to that?

Yeah! We're doing 47 shows. I just did a month in Australia and that was a really good warm-up for the summer tour. I like playing the biggest shows I can play and this tour with Poison is in the biggest stages in every city all across America. That's so perfect for the record and get the word out on the album. I know for a fact that in America people that have the first Skid Row record have Poison records. Come out and hear the new shit!