Hollywood Undead

Hollywood Undead hail (unsurprisingly) from the streets of Hollywood, California, mixing brash hip-hop, rock, and minor metalcore touches with cocky posturing and thug attitudes. Owing much of its popularity and exposure to the social networking monster MySpace, the group -- whose members usually wear masks on-stage -- started as the musical project of J-Dog and Tha Producer in June 2005. They uploaded some new music to their profile and very quickly started amassing song plays and online friends with tracks about drinking, sex, and emo kids. The gang, as the guys liked to refer to themselves, also grew to include six members: J-Dog and Tha Producer alongside Charlie Scene, Johnny 3 Tears (formerly called the Server), Funny Man, and Da Kurlzz. As the band's online profile steadily increased, MySpace head honcho Tom Anderson wasn't immune and wound up featuring Hollywood Undead's song "No. 5" on MySpace's first compilation album, in addition to giving them the distinction of being the first act signed to the site's new record label (distributed by Interscope) in 2005. Swan Songs finally appeared in 2008 on A&M/Octone Records. A year later, that label released an album of B-sides, live tracks, covers titled Desperate Measures. In 2010, vocalist Aron Deuce Erlichman left the group, to be replaced by Daniel "Danny" Murillo, a former contestant on American Idol and lead singer of Lorene Drive. After shows with Avenged Sevenfold on the Nightmare After Christmas Tour, Hollywood Undead released their sophomore album, American Tragedy, in April of 2011, and the album debuted in the top five of Billboard’s Top 200. The following November, A&M/Octone Records released a remix version of the record, called American Tragedy Redux, which featured mixes by Andrew W.K., Borgore, and KMFDM, among others. ~ Corey Apar, Rovi