2009
A few years ago you might’ve thought of Papa Roach as a washed up leftover from the nu-metal period. Fortunately for the band, they’ve been able to adapt to the always changing industry and to the tastes of a newer demographic. Though they still write songs about the same things (love, troubled childhoods, etc), their music now is definitely more modern and general. Some call it selling out but I’d call it surviving.
Jacoby Shaddix sat down with LiveDaily recently and here are some bits from the interview:
re: the upcoming Buckcherry, Avenged Sevenfold, Saving Abel tour
“We’re just going to annihilate the country before our rock-’n'-roll record comes and drops on the masses.”
“We make a f—ing club feel like an arena and we make an arena feel like a club. That’s the kind of band we are. We get our audience really involved in our set and we just try to make a fever pitch of energy to where people just feel exhausted after they see us play live. We want people to forget about time when they see us live. We want to play in front of people for an hour and a half and they thought we only played 45 minutes because they’re just lost in it. That’s the goal for our band. We’re at a level where we’ve never been. It’s f—ing explosive.”
re: band changes
“It’s always evolving and pushing our music into new places, new territories, new sounds and this is the new metamorphosis, a change for Papa Roach,” Shaddix said. “We got a new drummer. That was a change. We went in and sat down and said we wanted to make our rock record of the decade. How do we do this? We just had to make the boldest, strongest music that we possibly could. This is the record. This is it. This is who we are and what we are right now.”
What was the songwriting process like for “Metamorphosis”?
We went in and we went back to the [Hollywood mansion/recording studio the] Paramour and set up our equipment and just said, “All right. Let’s see what we got.” We went in and started jammin’, and then we started going into all Tobin’s riffs and the songs on [the computer program] Garage Band that he did on the road and pulling pieces and parts from that. Such a mass volume of music at once it was intimidating for me as a lyricist. I was like, “Holy s—. This is f—ing mountain sized and this is just getting started.” It was inspiring but it was also a daunting task. I had 16 songs in front of me, and they’re like, “All right. Cool. Where’s the lyrics?” I’m like, “All right. Let’s go.” I just f—ing went at it, went to town, broke down all the walls inside myself and just let it all out. I mean, no reserve.
Speaking of soundtracks, you’ve formed quite the alliance with the WWE.
They love that s—. They play the f—ing tar out of “… To Be Loved.” Every Monday night, that s— was banging. That song was so big on there that we did a tour in Europe with Iron Maiden and all the metalheads in Germany love the WWE. When we showed up, we started playing “… To Be Loved” and the crowd went f—ing crazy. I was like, “Holy s—. Iron Maiden fans are f—ing losing it to Papa Roach right now, singing this f—-ing song.” I didn’t know it was a hit over there, but it was crazy because WWE made it a hit. The metalheads were like, “Oh ya. It’s good Papa Roach.” That was a f—-in’ trip.
Check out the full interview here.
