Hollywood Undead - Swan Songs (2008)
I discovered this band in 2010 and instantly hated them without hearing them because I was an insecure teenager who needed to shit on everything that interested people I hated, and then I downloaded a copy of the album, and six years later, I still find myself occasionally bumping it in my headphones like one of the most perfect soundtracks to my teenage years: Filled with a lot of reckless & moronic shit with a nice tall wineglass of angst to the side to occasionally sip on.
After I stopped getting irrationally mad at that, I did the natural thing any other teenager would: I found something else to be irrationally mad at, which is the fact that for some reason (I guess them being friends?) they were compared so often to BrokeNCYDE which they sound absolutely nothing like. BrokeNCYDE sounds like audible diarrhea, but Hollywood Undead on their debut album come across as a bunch of well-intentioned guys who genuinely love hip-hop and metal enough not to mix them in any way they weren't confident enough in that it'd succeed, and often keeps the two genres fairly well separated from each other.
Look, if you can make it through the first five songs, which are "Undead", "Sell Your Soul", "Everywhere I Go", "No Other Place" and "No. 5" and not find a song that causes you to turn it the fuck up in your headphones, you are deaf and probably listen to Swans because of it. The production on this album is fucking killer, be it the loud riffs, the chill hip-hop instrumentation (how is "Bottle and a Gun" not slick as hell?), or the almost epic moments, such as in "Young" where the music just grows and explodes, much like our egos when we were young, or youngER, really. I'm not even that old but I feel like an old piece of shit, and if I feel old and still vibe to this album, it either says something about me or the album, and I like to imagine that it's the latter, because dammit, this music just makes me feel young again.
Something that will be apparent but isn't a huge flaw at all is the fact that none of the guys in the band are exactly the best rappers in the world, but damn, they each have their own little personality and flairs to their flows and lyrics that sets them apart from each other, with Johnny 3 Tears being aggressive but also a poetic type, Charlie Scene (I bet that's a name he really regrets now) being the sarcastic and offensive joker, J-Dog being the street-wise hip-hop-head, Funny Man being the sleazy party-goer, Da Kurlzz being the energetic hype-man, and chorus singer/producer Deuce being the backbone of the entire album, delivering catchy as shit choruses that take a chapter straight out of 50 Cent's fictional "How 2 Write a Hit Song" notebook, but surprisingly enough, they all can also come together to form a cohesive, serious, and emotional song that can grip you if they find you in the right/wrong mood, or just a teenager, whatever.
That's right: This shit gets pretty damn emotional at times! Maybe it's the alcohol making them feel some type of way, but these guys know how to pour their emotions out after pouring one out for the homies, with J-Dog sounding genuinely on the verge of a mental breakdown in "Black Dahlia", delivering a pretty raw performance that I'm sure most of us can or could've related to at some point in time.. When were lil' weenies.
Given the fact that it switches from metal-influenced music, to hip-hop, to more emotional tunes, I can safely confirm to you that it BANGS, it BUMPS, it makes you FEEL THINGS ABOUT THAT GIRL YOU KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL, and most importantly, if you get a tattoo of this band, or show your love for them in any way, it's a permanent judgmental asshole repellent!! With all of the things this album has going for it, you'd think it'd be capable of curing cancer, but no, it's just capable of giving you herpes of the soul, but in a good way! Pop that shit like bubblewrap!!
This is not the most artistic music you will ever hear by a long shot, but what is? Sometimes music doesn't need to be anything more than a fun time, even if this fun time has a few bumps in the road to occasionally flash you back to being an emotional teenager. If the idea of this music sounds idiotic or unappealing to you, then it wasn't made for you, but for the rest of us (read: THE COOL KIDS, ya fuckin' NERDS) this will probably go down as a relic in time of a better time and a better place, even if we were so convinced that it was the worst it'd ever be.
Sure, there are some flaws in the music, and some tracks that just don't do anything for me, but the band doesn't (usually) take itself that seriously and that's how I feel about the album. Maybe it's part nostalgia, maybe it's just a good album for the genre no matter what opinion you already have, and maybe it's Maybelline, but how many ways can I tell you this album kicks ass? A fair bit. How many times can I tell you this album kicks ass without you disregarding my opinion? Probably not many, if any at all, but if I'm being honest with you, I really just don't give a shit, because these are some catchy and occasionally powerful songs, and I like 'em, aside from "The Diary" because fuck that noise.
7/10 ________________________________________________________
Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
