Right, this may turn into a bit of a rant here, you’d better be warned… Why? Well, just keep reading.

Hollywood Killerz may not appeal to everyone: their raw, catchy hooks would however turn on any Michael Monroe or Dogs D’Amour fan. Their down’n’dirty street glam-punk potion is wildly going to scratch your back and make you beg for more; just listen to opener ‘700,000’ and it will haunt you forever with the force of a tornado. Furious and uncompromising, tracks like ‘Girls r Dead’, ‘Going Down’ or ‘Lovecrash’ manage to keep the right balance between Hollywood Killerz’ old school influences and more current trends, occasionally getting close to screaming vocals but never getting into uncomfortable kids territory.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘Dead On Arrival’ is not a monochrome album, although making the band’s trademark sharp and glowing; variety is guaranteed from the more swinging beats of ‘Over and Over’ to the darker side explored in ‘Through The Sand’, and of course the ballad (there has to be one in every album by law, when it comes to this genre), the emotional ‘How (Could I)’. The closing is in the hands and notes of ‘More Than It Hurts You’, cheekily winking to the good old Quireboys.

Now you must be wonder why here in the UK only few genre aficionados have heard about Hollywood Killerz: and here comes my rant.

For some obscure reason, many years ago someone decided that English was going to be the language for the world’s majority to communicate. I should be pretty pissed off, being from the magnificent city where civilization was born (Rome), and considering Italian is the language closest to Latin, from where most others originate. There are Latin words in English too, that you British pronounce horribly, spell even worse and don’t know the meaning of. I can surely understand your doctor’s prognosis better than you do.

Yet, I learned English in its spoken and written form, and accepted the fact that my English friends can’t be left alone to order a coffee when they visit Rome, mostly as they are so lazy they can’t bother learning as much as a full sentence; I even came to smile at your pronunciation of ‘bolognese’, which in old Rome would probably get your tongue cut off and fed to lions in the Coliseum. Explain me why now you have to make such a drama sometimes for a different pronunciation, which is, in fact, an exotic variation (certainly more pleasant than Mrs Cole’s Geordie squeaking), a way of owning and personalizing the sound of a language which in the world of arts should be very much welcome.

What does this have to do with ‘Dead on Arrival’? It’s quite obvious: Harry’s pronunciation, as much as I find it pleasant to the ears, is far from perfect by British standards, and may represent an obstacle (the only one) for Hollywood Killerz if they’re trying to conquer Albion; if you let that put you off trying this album, be warned, you’re really missing something here. Listen with an open mind and a bottle of JD, push HK with your local venues, play them in your car, tell your friends, and let the music do the talking for a change.

Review by The Wicked Witch

http://sonicshocks.com/HOLLYWOOD-KILLERZ-Dead-On-Arrival.php