DeathbyRomy’s Hollywood Forever isn’t just a record; it’s a blistered, blood-on-the-sidewalk reckoning with the fantasy factory that is Los Angeles — a place where dreams don’t die, they OD in broad daylight. Romy doesn’t try to pretty it up. She guts it, like the best punk rockers and soul survivors have always done when the machine pushed too hard and took too much.
This album is a 13-song hand grenade lobbed at the temples of every glitter-smeared sellout and predator that ever mistook a teenage girl for raw meat. And Romy, a veteran of this war zone by her early twenties, tells her story with the kind of scarred grace you can’t fake. Hollywood Forever isn’t here to ask permission — it demands that you listen, and it bleeds loud enough that you can’t turn away.
The opening salvo, “LA LA LAND,” lays it all bare with the kind of venom that only comes from surviving the lies. “Concrete cocaine, fake tits, migraines, fake friends, fake numbers” — it’s more than a hook; it’s a tattoo carved into the album’s bones. Romy’s voice flickers between heartbreak and a dare: try to tell me I’m wrong.
Elsewhere, on “YUNG & RICH,” she takes a battering ram to the spoiled silver-spoon set, spitting with a feral glee over basslines fat enough to crack pavement. Featuring Wargasm and bodyimage, the track isn’t just a middle finger — it’s a Molotov cocktail aimed straight at the velvet ropes.
Then there’s “Little Dreamer,” a love letter to the grind, soaked in the kind of optimism that only makes sense when you know exactly how deep the darkness can go. It’s the sound of Romy holding hands with her childhood self, whispering to her over the roar of the wreckage: keep dreaming anyway. The accompanying video, a decadent, defiant romp through a strip club, isn’t just shock value — it’s a battle hymn for every woman who ever had to turn survival into performance art.
And when Romy hooks up with Palaye Royale on “Pray To Me,” the result is an eruption of pure lust and desperation, the kind that feels too big to fit inside your chest. It’s an anthem for the kids who knew from day one that love would hurt, and still chose it anyway.
What makes Hollywood Forever stick isn’t just the brutality — it’s the hope woven through every riff and beat. Even as she recounts betrayals, manipulation, and exploitation, Romy refuses to let LA’s cynicism crush her. The glitter is toxic, the streets are mean, but there’s still a wild, desperate beauty here. You can dance to these songs — you should — but you’re dancing on graves.
And maybe that’s the point. Hollywood Forever is a party in a mausoleum, a rebellion in heels and eyeliner, a record that dares to believe in resurrection even after the city tried to bury her alive. DeathbyRomy didn’t just survive — she won. This album is the proof.
★★★★½
–Dave Marshall
Photo credit – Maytal Etehad
