When I sat down to peel the layers off of the acid-dripping onion known as Erotics rock n’ roll, the wheels almost fell completely off the wagon. It was April 2004 and The Erotics were in Boston for a show. By all accounts, the show went well, but when front man and sleaze genius Mike Trash got caught up in the post mayhem celebrations, his two band mates loaded gear and hauled ass. Mike spent the next six hours waiting for a train that would take him back to The Erotics hometown of Albany. Despite the fact he kept all the money from the gig and got his picture taken with a group of Asian tourists because they thought he was Nikki Sixx, it seemed everything that glittered was truly dead.

Short of becoming fodder for Gigs From Hell volume 2, the whole incident was, quite narrowly, a modern day flash metal suicide. Trash could have cut the whole thing off at the knees, grabbed Erotics rock n’ roll by the balls and dragged it down the trail blazed by so many flash metal characters before him. But he just sneered instead, blew smoke in the face of the whole thing, and chalked it up to rock n’ roll. And really, what would you expect from a guy who has a tattoo of himself on his arm, framed with the statement: ‘I’d Fuck Me…Would You Fuck Me.’

But let’s not get too carried away. It may not have been this exact moment, but there’s no doubt that a flash metal suicide lays somewhere in The Erotics future. Consider the elements – eyeliner, dangling cigarettes, sleazy hooks, wild orgies, monster ego, a storybook past that tells tales of glorified glamour and cocaine consumption, and a sprawling, uncertain tomorrow held firmly in the hands of a dangerous and talented rock star.

Since Mike Trash is, in essence, the diseased embodiment of The Erotics, the eroticeur, if you will, it makes perfect sense to go all the way back to 1988 when Trash joined perennial flash metal band, Lethal Lipstick. Having formed only two years earlier, it didn’t take long for Lethal Lipstick to bring in Trash to replace Riki Foxx on guitar. To show his predecessor the proper gratitude, Trash turned right around and stole Foxx’s girlfriend. And so the story begins. There’s no telling what kind of effect this one moment had on Foxx’s career, but today he’s masquerading as a worldly artist, recording and editing tracks with Dr. Ruth, Pavarotti, and Eartha Kitt under the not-so-glam name of Grey. The effect it had on Trash, however, was just par for the course.

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And The Erotics play pretty damn bitchin’ rock n’ roll music. Once Trash gave up the simple punk, went back to his roots, and harnessed the power of his inner rock god, he was able to unleash a sexually torrent, misbehavin’ maelstrom of sleazy rock goodness that defines the sound of modern day flash metal. Everything that was once comical and downright sensational is now badass and somewhat noble, in a saving rock n’ roll kind of way. Trash’s bratty, Alice Cooper gnarl, his black licorice-meets-fuming ether persona, and his pungently pretty riffs take the shamelessness of 80s flash metal and the shock and despair of a music biz on the brink and transform it into a virgin’s worst nightmare; the kind of rock n’ roll everyone warned you about, especially Tipper Gore and the grunge freaks.

The culmination of the most hedonistic and mutant rock n’ roll past staved off certain death time and again and arrived in true form via The Erotics’ 2003 release, All The Glitters Is Dead. There were always highlights; The Erotics appeared at Woodstock ’99, they released their debut EP, 21st Century S.O.B, in 2001, their songs were used in three Fred Olen Ray films, The Unliving, Bikini Carwash 3, and Haunting Desires, and Trash was contacted by Slash in February 2002 to tryout for what would eventually become Velvet Revolver, but believe me when I tell you that, through all the bitch and tangle, All That Glitters Is Dead is The Erotics’ monumental achievement. So much so, that it was almost their swan song.

Trash created a surefire flash metal gem with All That Glitters Is Dead. It’s delinquency, mainly, and not spray painting and cow tipping, either, but kicking, stabbing, biting, and raping. It’s infectious and righteous, slandering and pandering. The flash metal overtones are obvious, from the supermodel Hollywood crank parties in “Fast Cars and Porno Stars,” “Death of the Party,” and “Supermodel Suicide,” to the sound of illustrious fame and red spotlight arena rock in “Rocket to Nowhere” and “Bullet.” The opener “Space Age Mafia” is the cincher – a pure cock n’ punk classic that will hunt you down for as long as you live. You see, it’s endless, and listening to All That Glitters Is Dead is like being tossed around in a blender full of bloody mannequin parts and liquid cocaine. No one, and I mean no one, is supposed to survive, least of all The Erotics.

Remember, this is the next generation of flash metal suicides, and so we’ve got to seer as best we can. I mean, predicting the future of rock’s high and mighty is like pinpointing the exact location of Pepsi Sheen. It’s the real ones, like Trash, that keep us guessing, keep us hopped up for more. There was a time there where the light at the end of Trash’s tunnel was fading fast, like a ghost train into the night, and all he had going for him was a batch of incredibly trashy pop tunes, a nose for trouble, and a strange knack for survival. Trash’s problem always was, and is, the fact that he’s just too good. We’ve seen them come and go, and the majority of them went because they weren’t good enough, tried too hard, didn’t have a clue, or just plain couldn’t hack it. This isn’t the case with Trash. In fact, he nailed the whole damn thing right smack dab on the head that a near death experience in late 2004 landed him a coveted spot at the foggy crossroads. Faced with the choice of going for broke, playing the raging lunatic, the hormonal chainsaw with excess to burn, or doing what no other flash metal icon had done before him by going straight, fixing himself up all clean and sober, and taking a legitimate shot at immortality, he decided to rule in favor of providence. History has proven that both choices are clear dead ends, so we’ll just see if Trash sinks to the bottom of the flash metal heap or crawls out on top.

And so the rock rolls on. It was a clean and sober Trash who released 2005’s Rock N’ Roll Killing Machine, which is a hooked up, smacked out, fuck for all rock record, written by a guy who now puts into his music the same diseased passion he use to put into his body. The Erotics have seen band members come and go, but the one constant has been Trash, whose flash metal shenanigans have defied logic and explanation time and again. We’ve done the best we could here, but there’s just no telling if The Erotics will finally reach those stars Trash has had in his eyes since he first donned the liner, or live in infamy as the best B movie soundtrack band sleaze rock has ever known.