REBIRTH

EIGHT ALBUMS IN, HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD ARE READY TO BE BORN AGAIN. THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW THEY WENT BACK TO THEIR ROOTS, AND CREATED 'HOTEL KALIFORNIA'.

- MADDY HOWELL

In 2020, Hollywood Undead were on the verge of reinvention. Steering away from their typical sound, on 'New Empire Vol. 1 & 2' they put aside everything that had come before and focused on a new beginning.

Evolving from the familiar sounds of their past and leaning into their rock influences, the five-piece looked to broaden the horizons of what people might expect from their band, but as they readied themselves for their new empire to begin, suddenly they were watching it fall.

"We were in Europe doing the first tour of the bunch that we had planned, and we had to flee Europe because we almost got stuck there. They shut down flights in Germany the day after we flew out, so it was complete pandemonium there," Charlie Scene recalls.

"You sit at home wondering, 'When are we going back out on tour? Is it a month? Is it two months?' No one would have thought it would have been two years. By the time it was over, it was too late to tour on that record."

Accepting that they'd never see the world's reaction to the fresh-faced Hollywood Undead unveiled on 'New Empire', despite the knockback, the quintet refused to take the pandemic as an excuse to sit around catching up on TV shows.

After spending time with their families and flexing their creative muscles on their various solo projects, the five of them sat in their separate home studios connected by Zoom calls and phone signals plotting the future, and as they looked through their windows it seemed darker than ever. "When people feel like they can do stuff and get away with it, you never know what they're going to do. A lot of bad stuff started happening because no one was enforcing rules or laws. Things started getting crazy," J-Dog remembers.