Formed in south-east Sweden during 2005, female-fronted Vanity Blvd are yet another Scandinavian band with an ear for melody and a dirty riff, first coming to our attention in 2008 with the critically acclaimed debut Rock'N'Roll Overdose.
Six years on, we caught up with singer Anna [nee Cindi] Savage to find out why it’s taken so long to release their second.
You also changed your name…
Yes. I thought it would be cool to have a stage-name but I never really felt comfortable with the name Cindi; it wasn’t me. It was like I was Cindi when I performed and Anna in private and to me that felt a little schizophrenic. Savage, on the other hand, always felt right because there lives a little savage in me all the time.
Why has it taken you six years to release your second album?
Unfortunately we had a lot of band member issues and couldn’t seem to get along. We had different goals and were so different in many ways. Creating music didn’t feel like fun anymore and we started to doubt what we were doing. Myself and Traci [Trexx, guitarist] changed members several times and it felt like Vanity Blvd was slowly dying. But we had a talk and decided to give it one more shot in finding members and luckily we did. We found this amazing talented bass player [Pete Ash] who shared the same goals and dreams as us and after that we got in contact with this really cool drummer [Gebb] who sounded like no one we ever heard before. We got the fun back and now we love what we do.
Were you pleased with the first album’s reaction?
It got a lot of good response worldwide, so no complaints there. But as I said before, the band were in pieces after the release and there was more focus on finding a new line-up than actually on the album release. I know we could have done more with the first album but sometimes life gets in the way.
How does the new album, Wicked Temptation, compare with the previous one?
It has more attitude and punch and it sounds a bit rougher. On this album we were there throughout the whole process and worked with a great producer [Nicko Di Marino] who really got the whole picture of what we wanted to do.
When will we see you in the UK?
We really hope to play the UK later this year, so if there are any promoters wanting to bring us over then get in touch with our management/booking agency and we can sort it out.
Wicked Temptation is out now via Noisehead Records.
