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Album Details

• Artist: Hollywood Undead
• Album: Swan Songs
• Label: Octone
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: sinist3r-punk on 2011-03-18

Swan Song: A final gesture or performance, given before dying or retirement. Hollywood Undead couldn't have picked a more apt title for their debut album, because after listening to this, I hope they seriously consider retiring from making music. I understand that this kind of music is for a certain niche of people. Mostly, the kind of people that hang out in Hot Topic and think that rap music makes you gangster. You know, the kind of shit that makes my generation look bad. But even for those carbon based life forms, Swan Songs is a mockery of everything real rappers like Eminem and Jay-Z have been building towards for decades.

It's difficult to express when my frustrations with this album began. It probably started with the album cover, which has an interesting premise with the city of Hollywood upside down, but is instantly ruined by every single member of the band concealing their face behind bandanas and hockey masks. People really need to stop this crap. It didn't look cool when Slipknot did it and it's a cheap way to make your band "mysterious". Led Zeppelin was the perfect example of mystique executed perfectly in a band, and they didn't resort to dressing like wanna-be gangsters on Halloween. Obviously, things were off to a rocky start before I even opened the cd case.

Hollywood Undead is perhaps the most juvenile attempt at making music I've ever heard. I'm going to assume that every member has a severe case of turrets, because every other word is a variation of f*ck or f*g. Let's say there's a little fat kid that looks up to the most popular kid in town because the popular kid represents everything the little fat kid isn't. So little fat kid tries his hardest to imitate the popular kid just to get 15 seconds of fame and success but fails miserably because everything gets lost in a haze of mistranslations and poor speaking skills. Now replace the little fat kid with Hollywood Undead and the popular kid with Eminem. You now have a perfect representation of what Hollywood Undead is and what they never will be.

There are no redeeming qualities to be found in Swan Songs. I get the impression that these guys must have grown up in the suburbs listening to rap music, pointing wooden guns sideways at each other pretending they were badder than they really were. Every "serious" song on here just sounds like a weak attempt to replicate the sounds and drama of better rappers with more skill. The beats are monotonous and boring and the singing (if it can be called singing) is laughably one dimensional and poorly put together. I would say this is one of the worst albums I've ever heard, but that doesn't do it justice. So to bring this to a close, I'd like to give some friendly advice. If you enjoy the idea of having one more thing to add to the mountain of reasons for hating my generation, then feel free to pick up Swan Songs, because this is the most heinous crime committed against the world since [Insert joke about George Bush's presidency here].

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