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Q&A with online phenom Hollywood Undead

By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT

Their success has proven to be a virtual reality of sorts. Now, after three years of building an online empire, Hollywood Undead hopes to be equally successful selling records in the real world.

They've added more than 441,000 friends on MySpace who have registered in excess of 24 million page views and nearly 52 million song plays, but the Hollywood-base sextet - Deuce, J-Dog, Johnny 3 Tears, Charlie Scene, Funny Man and Da Kurlzz - are set to release their much-anticipated debut album, "Swan Songs," on A&M/Octone Records.

Produced by Danny Lohner (Nine Inch Nails) and Don Gilmore (Linkin Park) along with Deuce, "Swan Songs" is a cross between Insane Clown Posse and NWA, mixing hip-hop, industrial, rock and metal.

Formed three years ago, the band never played outside of the Los Angeles area until selling out their first cross country tour earlier this year. The tour consisted of 19 shows in metropolises like New York City and Toronto. On Sunday they'll be in Charleston at The Music Farm.

"It was three years of us waiting and fans waiting," said Charlie Scene, who was listening to the forthcoming Guns 'N' Roses album before this interview at a recent tour stop in Pensacola, Fla., "but we wanted to get out there just as bad as they wanted to come see us."

Charlie, who like his band mates, was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, talked about their Internet success and the fact that their fans relate to their music because it's the "truth about what average, suburban teens are thinking."

Q: You guys are up to 51 million plays on your MySpace page - even before the record came out you had 41 million - so how in the world did you guys manage that?

Answer: Umm, we really don't know. I think it's just because we put something out there that people really connected to and it was something totally different from everything else that was on MySpace and just the honesty of the lyrics and the songs and the catchiness. People just really responded to it.

Q: When you're getting that kind of action on a Web site, without the aid of a record deal, how much time and effort does it take to keep up with that?

A: It was a lot of work, honestly, just maintaining the page and answering all the mail. We still answer every message that we get ourselves. The way we released songs, I think, really helped. We didn't just put all of our songs up at once. We picked a song and then tell people, "Hey, we're not putting up another song until we're at x amount of friends." It worked and we worked the page as much as we could. We knew how beneficial it would be for our band in utilizing MySpace.

Q: Was that conscious effort going into the project or something you discovered once it started happening, and then it was just a matter of keeping it going?

A: It started off, honestly, just for fun. All of us were in other bands when we first started Hollywood Undead. We honestly didn't think it would create the kind of reaction that it did, but, yeah, obviously after we saw that people liked it then we said, "All right, lets get started on this."

Q: When you can create that kind of energy, that kind of buzz on your own with no money in an apartment in Hollywood then what kind of expectation do you have when it comes to signing with a record company?

A: They were worried if the MySpace fans and numbers would translate to record sales. I think that it worked really well. I think that when the album first came out it was solely on MySpace promotion. We sold 22,000 records our first week. That pretty much proved to them that what we were doing—

Q: I don't think you had anything to prove. What more could a record company ask for with the signing of a brand new band? I think the expectation is on the part of the band to say, "This is what we did on our own. What more can you do?"

A: Exactly. That was kind of our attitude. So far they're doing an awesome job. They're a perfect label for our band.

Keith Ryan Cartwright is a Colorado-based journalist.