We Are

Album: Notes From The Underground (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • The lead single from Hollywood Undead's Notes From The Underground album is an epic call-to-arms. Vocalist Johnny 3 Tears explained its meaning: "The song is about collective resistance. It's the silent majority, but we're using Los Angeles as the backdrop. Every time we work with Danny, he takes our music to the next level. He's willing to go as far outside the box as we are. As a whole, it's a good introduction to Notes From The Underground because it encompasses the band idealistically. Think of it as an ode to our misled youth."
  • The album title is a homage to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1864 novel of the same name, which is a personal favorite of Johnny 3 Tears. The protagonist of Dostoyevsky's Notes From The Underground is a bitter, retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg (the Underground Man) and the book is spilt into two parts. The first half finds the Underground Man attacking emerging Western philosophy in some rambling memoirs, whilst its second part is the actual story where certain events occur that lead to a furthering of his consciousness. The book is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel.

    Johnny 3 Tears explained the title alludes to what's really under the mask: "We've maintained an underground identity," remarked the Hollywood Undead vocalist. "When we write songs, we're coming from a place people don't like to look at or talk about openly. As people get older, they get used to lying. We have a bond with so many kids because they have a trace of that honesty. They don't know how bad some things get yet. We tell them the truth."

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