Swan Songs

iTunes Review

Hollywood Undead perform festival-friendly rapcore in masks, face paint, and other disguises so that the overall result both looks and sounds like a cross between Slipknot and Insane Clown Posse. Also, their music is loud, funny, rebellious, irreverent, lowbrow, and unapologetically obscene where the lyrics are concerned. "Undead" kicks the door open with distorted synthesizers, gargantuan guitars, a big booming rhythm section, melodic screaming, and Beastie Boys influenced rhymes that are ego fueled and peppered with hard claims and a juvenile sense of misogynistic sexuality, all making for a catchy little stew of aural shock value. Though somewhat predictable, "Young" is a standout track, nicely contrasting simplified Eminemesque phrasing with a truly contagious chorus built around some pretty decent singing. The anthemic "City" is the album's main insta-hit with words that paint visions of a dark comic book metropolis being burned by the band in a neo Nero fashion.