Hollywood Undead coming to X-Fest

Band members Johnny 3 Tears, Charlie Scene, J-Dog, Deuce, Funny Man and Da Kurlzz wear masks, bandanas and hoods while spitting sex rhymes and depicting Los Angeles at its most unglamorous (Credit: Photo provided by Universal Music )

Rap metal won't die, and Hollywood Undead is partying with that stylistic zombie.

Band members Johnny 3 Tears, Charlie Scene, J-Dog, Deuce, Funny Man and Da Kurlzz wear masks, bandanas and hoods while spitting sex rhymes and depicting Los Angeles at its most unglamorous.

Hollywood Undead first made noise as a MySpace phenomenon, and the story of 500,000 in sales for debut album "Swan Songs" is worthy of a screenplay.

In advance of the group's Indiana debut Sept. 12 at X-Fest, Da Kurlzz -- a hype man/drummer with the given name Matthew Busek -- connected with Metromix while taking a break from social-networking Web sites.

If you handle the Internet work for the band, some might say you're the man most responsible for Hollywood Undead's mushrooming popularity?
Right. I just remember four years ago when we started, MySpace was all there was. Now it's grown to Facebook and Twitter. It's exhausting.

What you've described is how the band built its fan base. Do you feel like the mainstream is just waking up to what you do?
You never really know the popularity of the group until you go out on tour. That kind of proves the point. Before our record came out, all we had was our MySpace and online popularity. In the last year, we've seen how it's grown. We've gone from playing clubs to an average audience of 2,000 a night -- which is pretty amazing.

Hollywood Undead doesn't celebrate people who travel to Los Angeles to "make it" and become stars.
Just like anywhere, it's a place where you live. The glitz and glamour is all bull----. The economy is bad; we have fires here; there's horrible traffic; it can be dirty. For every great side, there's a bad side. I think we're just trying to tell people that we could make music about drinking Cristal and partying with babes in our Escalade, but that's not who we are. We're a bunch of broke guys that are telling stories about our experiences and ourselves.

Is it correct that you ditch your masks during your shows?
We look at the masks as part of the mystique of our band, but we don't take it to the serious side where we hide our faces all the time. Throughout the set, we take our masks off. It's not like a big unveiling. It's very casual.

You wear an understated "tragedy and comedy" mask. Why did you pick that look?
It's how I view our music. One side is pretty happy, and the other side is quite serious.