W: Richard Hudson-Miles I: Jody Cunningham
The Papa Roach guys continue to elevate their creative foot stomping, head banging music offer, they played UK sell-out shows earlier this year and took the European music festivals by storm. That being said they are also some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met in the music industry, humble, grateful and friendly people.
The deluxe album release digitally of EGO TRIP feat. Swerve (Rockville Remix) and Cut The Line (feat. Beartooth) – latest version of their single released in 2023 elicits as big a response as the classics. It proves the band can and do write stadium anthems whilst pushing their sound in new directions. They also mashed it up on their European tour with Jacoby singing Bring me to life with Evanescence.
To amp it up even further, the band interspersed ‘Last Resort’ with segments of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. This kind of showmanship has become a staple of recent Papa Roach shows.
The Birmingham gig, the band invited special guest Rob from Prodigy and performed The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ (1997) which blew the crowds mind and everyone was completely enthralled.
1t remains an obvious crowd pleaser, and still hits hard twenty years later. They played it to close their Leeds Arena show. Speaking in a recent interview, lead singer Jacoby Shaddix seemed comfortable with this legacy: “Maybe my purpose on this Earth was to write that song, and that’s fuckin’ A, man. It’s something that’s had a massive impact on music, but also on individuals, and I’m so grateful. It’s one of those songs where it could just be a riff, and you rock out to it, or it could be a life raft. And for me, that’s dope”. Many people have written to the band about how this track helped them through life crises. It represented a fittingly euphoric conclusion to a relentlessly high-octane show.
Papa Roach’s live shows demonstrate the stagecraft, technicality, and tightness accrued through decades on the road together. Jacoby still delivers his vocals with a perennially youthful energy and attitude.
More importantly, the crowd still reacts as if they were listening to Papa Roach for the first time, or falling in love with them all over again.
At the Leeds show, songs new and old were carefully curated to carry the set into a gradual crescendo, taking the audience along for the ride. For much of the gig, an increasingly chaotic circle-pit gyrated at the front of the Arena. Seeing the frenzy before him, Jacoby felt the need to remind the crowd about the ethics of the mosh pit: “If someone goes down, you pick ‘em up!”. As well as conducting the crowd, Jacoby described in our interview how his primary ambition as a performer is to bring positive energy which counteracts the noise and negativity in the world at present.
The California rock band has huge longevity, as well as die-hard fanbase. It also proves their music retains a currency lacking in many of their noughties nu-metal contemporaries. Their famously high-energy live sets, showcases the band’s enduring music appeal which also has much to do with their lyrical themes of self-doubt, grief, and survival. I can see people deeply connect with their lyrics.
Judging by the demographic of these recent shows, the quintessential angst of Papa Roach songs resonates as much with Gen Z as the skater boys and punk rockers, now well into middle age, which the band attracted twenty years ago.
Despite its age, the seminal Papa Roach cut remains ‘Last Resort’ (2000). This track catapulted the band to superstardom and became ubiquitous, to the extent of being overplayed, with the alternative rock scene. The visceral nature of its lyrical content, which is about an attempted suicide of a friend of the band, seems symbiotically connected to it’s famous shredding guitar solo.
Jacoby: “When we play these shows you can see people are juiced. Smiling, banging into each other, taking their frustration and anger and channelling it into something which isn’t destructive”. Over the decades, Papa Roach have honed a near perfect rock set, weaponised with hits throughout. However, it is also clear that the show functions as a cathartic experience for many of their fans.
The theme of catharsis recurs throughout Ego Trip. As Jacoby emphasised, all Papa Roach LP titles are “reflective of what’s going on in our lives” at the time of writing. Their debut LP ‘Old Friends From Young Years’ (1997) was an homage to the bands which inspired them to take up music. “A few years later we put out ‘Infest’ (2000), like we were going to infest the world”.
Over twenty years later, the band are comfortable with being called veterans. Guitarist Jerry Horton insisted that “it was always our ambition to be a career band. When we started, we looked up to bands like Metallica, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Faith No More. They were well on their way, yet constantly evolving. For us, this was inspiring because we had to constantly guess where they would go next. We want to take our fans on that journey too”.
‘Ego Trip’ is certainly a wild ride, departing frequently from the trademark Papa Roach formula. It also evidences that their teenage frustration has matured into deeper psychological introspection.
Self-evidently, the band are teenagers no longer. At many points, ‘Ego-Trip’ evidences that Papa Roach are a band negotiating what psychoanalysts call the ‘middle passage’. This is the midlife period where one accepts ageing, responsibility, and loss, or breaks
down into crisis denying such things. Jacoby describes how the songs were born from “profound conversations about life” concerning “who is at the helm of our egos and what it is that drives and motivates us”. ‘Ego-Trip’ often feels like the confessional of a seasoned band on the analyst’s couch.
Many struggle to reconcile this with their inner selves and feel pressured to act according to type. When interviewed, neither Jacoby nor Jerry resemble stereotypical nu-metallers. Jacoby deeply cares about psychology, society, and the well-being and mental health of his listeners.
Similarly, Jerry is a talented photographer. You can see the aesthetic sensitivity of his work in his pictures.
For Jacoby, “when you’re making a record, each song is just another element of the ego expressed”.
Both Jerry and Jacoby speak openly about the pressures which come with balancing parenthood with incessant touring. Jacoby: “I definitely find purpose in being a husband and father, but the purpose of being an artist is something that is all-consuming.” Indeed, it is the work ethic and constant worldwide touring which has given Papa Roach their longevity and fanbase. However, many of the songs on ‘Ego Trip’, such as ‘Always Wandering’, or the untypical acoustic ballad ‘Leave a Light On’, poignantly reflect on absent love. Jacoby admits that “everyone in our families have sacrificed to help us to pursue this dream.”
The performance of No Apologies, mid-set, was the most moving part of the Leeds gig. Though life on the road has made family life difficult, Jacoby insists that there is an important lesson there for his kids. “Ultimately, if you are not fulfilled as a human being, what’s this all about anyway? Because, at the end of the day you leave this place alone. But I’ve found a way to balance both [work and family]”.
On ‘Ego-Trip’ you can hear a mature band figuring out their way toward self-knowledge and individuation, rather than the illusory vanities of the Ego.
Since then, the album has been streamed over 157 million times, and the band have toured it worldwide. This year they’ve gone from 7.3 million monthly listeners to 11.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
