Nine Lives
2012 | Rock
“They wanna see blood, they wanna see hate, like needle in your vain, sickness with no name.-- In a world that's insane, was America to blame? -- When you're prayin' for a change, to a god with no face!"
Trivia
- The album hit #37 on the Billboard 200, #13 on the Top Rock Albums, #9 on the Top Alternative Albums, #7 on the Top Independent Albums & #2 on the Top Hard Rock Albums charts respectively.
- Aron Erlichman , stage name Deuce, is a rapper, producer and guitarist best known for his part as producer, singer-songwriter and founding members of Hollywood Undead,
- "America" is currently the albums most successful single, selling 36,000 copies since its release.
THE HOT TAKES
Luke Tatum
This song is a nice, heaping helping of "I won't do what you tell me." Is there a lot of specific, academic criticism of the state and its practices? No. This one is all from the gut. But hey, we need stuff like that too. If your default response to the state is to raise the middle finger, then more power to you.
Sherry Voluntary
I like the sound of this song, but honestly I don’t know if it’s pro-America, or not. Since I’m not sure though, I will assume it is anti-war, anti-police state, pro-dissent, because there is a lot that could point to that. The particularly youthful aggressive dissent of “So when they point the finger, you flip one back and say fuck that. Fuck that!,” bursts out of this song with the attitude of the disenfranchised. Politicians do want to see blood and hate that they can manipulate and control people with. Sometimes all there is to do is to look the bastards in the eye and give them a big fuck you.
Nicky P
I'll start this off by disclosing that I have always thought Hollywood Undead was a stupid band propped up by the MySpace algorithm. This is marginally better. I think the lyrics are a bit confused but there are moments where it almost hits on something. I think the song at its core is blaming American culture for destruction across the world on both physical and cultural fronts. Culture has been our biggest export for ages so it goes without saying that's going to affect the world. There are also drug references which I think symbolically reference the effects of our drug war in places like Mexico and Afghanistan. We can go ahead and add the final price of the puzzle which is our thirst for punishing other nations militarily. A president is " presidential" til he bombs a nation for something we later verify they had nothing to do with. If I'm reading it correctly, that's all stuff I think a libertarian can get behind.