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  DAN HYMAN  

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Two years ago, a few months after their 2008 debut album, Swan Songs, was certified gold, Hollywood Undead — a group of six masked hooligans from SoCal who combine elements of rock and hip-hop with a raw, punk-rock attitude — still weren’t exactly sure how to define their sound. To them, this was hardly a concern. “It’s like, ‘Take it or leave it,’” Johnny 3 Tears, the group’s most outspoken member, said when pressed on the issue in a 2009 interview. “If you don’t like it, we don’t care.”

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Audiences ate it up however, succumbing to the band’s no-nonsense repertoire of smash-mouth anthems. But now, as they prepare to release their follow-up, American Tragedy (due in stores April 5th), the band is ready to respond; they felt an evolution of their sound was not only desirable, but perhaps expected. “If we came out with the same record twice we’d be considered a failure,” says group member J-Dog, bunched into a crowded booth with his five bandmates on a rainy Hollywood afternoon. “I think everybody stepped up their game,” Johnny 3 Tears adds. “We didn’t want it to sound like Swan Songs Part 2.”

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Despite the success of their first effort, the band (which also includes Da Kurlzz, Danny and Funny Man) felt under the gun to avoid the “one-trick pony” label. “People say you have your whole life to write your first record and then a few months or a year to write your second,” J-Dog says. “This time was a little more hard-pressed… a little more pressure.”

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For their new record– jumpstarted by the hard-riffing rocker “Been To Hell” and highlighted by the cry for help that is “Hear Me Now”– the band worked with multiple producers, unlike the first go-round where it was a two-man production job. They were sure however, to maintain the same hands-on approach as their debut; the group once again did pre-production in their home studios before letting producers “spruce up” the raw cuts. “The record just sort of happened naturally,” Charlie Scene explains. “We don’t try to go in and try to sound like Hollywood Undead. That just comes with the territory.”

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In the time since releasing Swan Songs, Hollywood Undead have primarily toured, getting rowdy onstage and seemingly soaking up every moment of their burgeoning fame. That’s not to say there weren’t some clear-cut benefits to settling back down in the studio. “Half (the time) we’re eating Panda Express, half we’re drinking Bud Light,” J-Dog says laughingly of the band’s studio  routine. “Then we just dump Bud Light on the Panda Express.”
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