Hollywood Undead - ready for the beaches and the bars!

Submitted by Jules_Caruana on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 2:29am

Rap metal outfit Hollywood Undead has been around the block a good few occasions since their formation in 2005. With two studio albums, 2008’s Swan Songs and this year’s American Tragedy, and the Desperate Measures live album under their belts, their appearance on the Soundwave Revolution line-up was given, and it was great to see that even though the Revolution was cancelled, they did get a call back for a headlining Counter Revolution tour with UK band Skindred as support.

Finally being back home in Los Angeles after months of touring, guitarist J-Dog of Hollywood Undead took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to me about their latest tours, the latest addition to their ranks and the band’s excitement in coming over to Australia.

J-Dog and the rest of these North Hollywood boys have come a long way from releasing their debut album Swan Songs back in 2008, and the world has gone crazy for the masked sextet and their latest studio album American Tragedy. 

Asking how J-Dog thought they did since their 2005 formation and the debut album Swan Songs in 2008, he explained that “a lot happened to us in the past 5 years. But the big mistake was that people thought Desperate Measures was our second CD release, which it wasn’t, it was supposed to be just a live DVD but it got kind of mixed up.” He continued, “Now that American Tragedy came out earlier this year, it kind of cleared up everything. We’ve been doing pretty good, I mean, we’re happy with it and we’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into it and it came out really well.”

Seeing their original vocalist Deuce part ways with the band in late 2009, Hollywood Undead was lucky enough to find a friend capable of filling that void, but how did the band feel taking Danny in?

“Really good, it was a transition that went better than we all expected,” J-Dog says, “it worked all out for the best of us. You gotta get along with someone you gonna spend a lot of time with and we have the feeling that we’ve known Danny since forever.”

“He was a friend of a friend, so some of us had met him before he joined, but within the first two weeks of being with Hollywood Undead it really felt like he’s been with us since the start. We were gonna wait and try find other people, but we’re more than happy with the way things have turned out with Danny.”

Don’t get this wrong: even though the boys of Hollywood Undead have never been over here does not mean they’re sitting on their asses, these guys are constantly on the road, especially during the European summer festival calendar.

“We did a good few festivals in Europe a month ago, you know Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in Germany and Download, that was really fun,” he recalled fondly. “We went  to Japan right after and just got back from there two weeks ago. Japan is awesome, I mean the crowd over there, they're such amazing fans.”

Asking of their initial Asian trip, J-Dog responded vividly, “Japan is so expensive! Like, for an American to go over there you’d spend like $60 US for three beers in a bar, it’s crazy.” But even though the HU boys know how to party, it’s not all about that. "The culture from anywhere else in the world to Japan is so different. I guess on top of that some Japanese people don’t speak English, so for an American band to go over there and do decent is hard, because a lot of people just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

I have met the band back in Europe in 2009 and was lucky enough to spend a rather alcohol fuelled night with them, and not knowing anyone in my circle of friends liking this band, I was wondering how many fans they had over here that they knew of.

“Ever since our band, there used to be a feature on MySpace where you could see who added you and where they are from and I think something between like 20 and 30 per cent of people who added us were from Australia,” J-Dog began exploring and speaking of the social media that the band has been exposed to, “And then the guy who runs our MySpace and Facebook said that there is a shitload of people from Australia and we'd really have to get ourselves over there.”

He continued, "But we could never really afford it before and never had any other opportunity for shows lined up before, but now the opportunity with Soundwave Revolution and Counter Revolution finally has us going out there.”

“We got kinda bummed out for a second when we heard that Soundwave Revolution got cancelled,” J-Dog says straight off the bat, “but got excited again as soon as we were told we were back on track and come over, cause we really wanted to go!”

With the band never hitting the Australian shores prior to their forthcoming September tour, the question of what the plans of him and the rest of the outfit were, seemed pretty valid.

“I don’t know yet really. We’re all kinda curious cause we’ve never been to Australia!” he explained, “I mean, we definitely want to check out the beaches, wanna go to some bars and take a look at the cities themselves, but at this stage we just don’t know yet. There’s a lot of shit we wanna do like sightseeing for example.”

Being from the US, I was kindly pointing out that seasons here are reversed, and maybe heading to the beach in Aussie Spring time might not be what he thought it would be, but I was surprised!

“Oh. It’s not summer over there? Well I don’t care, I don’t wanna go swimming at the beach, I just wanna see it, and maybe go to some skate parks and stuff. I mean I live in LA so I go to the beach every time, I just wanna see the beaches in other countries.”

Having met J-Dog’s Father in 2010 and having spend a good bit of time with him to know that it was a dream of his to come to Australia, I put my thoughts of his joining their Australian leg of the tour … tongue in cheek, of course. J-Dog’s answer was clearly amused, a chuckle swinging with his words, “Yeah, my dad would probably kill someone to go over to Australia, shame he has to work otherwise he’d totally come with me over there. He could carry my guitar, though I don’t think he knows how to set one up or even tune one.”

After having had big tours and their latest album American Tragedy hitting shelves early this year, the big question was if he thinks him and the rest of Hollywood Undead are ready for Australia.

“I don’t know, we heard some crazy stories about the crowd over there in Australia, and I can’t wait to experience it first hand. I heard different stories about [it] and different people and how they are and it’s totally different from what I expect, I heard people go nuts so I am hoping that all our shows will be a lot of fun."

Having seen them live on three occasions both in Europe and the US, there is no doubt that J-Dog and his boys will rock Aussie stages and have a lot of fans leave with somewhat of a relief that they finally played Australia, but even though Australia rocks, I was interested in the future plans of the outfit.

“We’ll do a North America tour in fall, like early November, with bands such as Asking Alexandria, We Came As Romans and right after that we’ll jump on tour again with Avenged Sevenfold, so we’ll be pretty busy for the rest of the year.” Knowing that Avenged Sevenfold took HU on board for a North American tour late last year had me wonder if they became mates. “It’s cool that A7X asked us to come back on tour with them. They’re cool guys."

Even though American Tragedy saw its release from April of 2011, I still wanted to probe and see if there are any plans for a new album on the horizons.

“We actually have a studio on the bus, so we try do as much as we can while on the road. After Swan Songs we had like little to no time to actually write a new record, so having a studio while on the road is pretty awesome."

J-Dog did not give a date, but hey, six boys from Hollywood on a bus having a studio is very promising with regard to new material for another smashing album!

Hollywood Undead will be touring under the banner of Counter Revolution with Skindred during September.

Dates are as follows:

Visit: www.facebook.com/hollywoodundeadofficial 

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