Ozzy Is Paid Homage In Hollywood Undead Track

It appears Ozzy Osbourne’s metal classic ‘Crazy Train’ has gained a tribute from the most unlikely of sources – LA crunk metal crew Hollywood Undead. The masked rappers used the opening riff from the Ozzy song, rewriting it for keyboard in the lead track ‘Undead’ from their recent album Swan Songs. See for yourself (NSFW):



While it’s entirely possible, and frankly quite likely, that the members of Hollywood Undead are actually so detached from the history of metal that their only knowledge of Ozzy Osbourne is a bumbling MTV marionette causing them to write the aforementioned riff with little idea it was blazing plagiarism, it’s also possible that wasn’t the case.

In complete contradiction to what you’d think, and to what the video for ‘Undead’ would have you believe, they actually seem like fairly level headed chaps. Thus leading you to think that in fact they did completely rip off ‘The Ozzman’ but relied on a number of factors in order to avoid reprimand:

  1. The adolescents who are ensnared by their ‘tits-and-arse-rock-hop’ wouldn’t even recognise the lick. To their porn obsessed minds Linkin Park are vintage metal and nothing exists prior.
  2. If it were discovered to be a note for note lift they could plead ignorance just like in the Coldplay/Satriani debacle.
  3. It’s not a poorly hidden rip off and really is a poorly paraphrased tribute.

The real reason will no doubt surface in some interview, somewhere. In the mean time it’s worth noting that in the 2:10 shot of the previously linked interview one of the members is wearing a Converge hoodie. At least we know one of them has taste.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Comment, Metal

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s