Our Spot­light On: Szi­get 2010 series con­tin­ues with Papa Roach. Papa Roach were formed ini­tially in 1993, at high school. The band takes their name from Jac­oby Shaddix’s, the lead singer’s, late grand­father, Howard Roatch. The band released their first EP in 1994, and their first full-length album in 1997. By 1998, they had already sup­por­ted some big name acts, such as Incubus and (hed) P.E.. In 1999, as part of a devel­op­ment pro­gramme within Warner Broth­ers, the band were given some money to record a demo, which they did, but Warner Broth­ers ulti­mately decided not to sign them. The five track demo included four demos of songs that even­tu­ally appeared on Incest, and one of a song that appeared on a later album. Over these years, the band developed a friend­ship with another Cali band, Alien Ant Farm (prob­ably most fam­ous for their cover of “Smooth Crim­inal”). After being rejec­ted by Warner Broth­ers, Dream­Works approached the band, and made them an offer, which the band took them up on. Their first major-label album was released in 2000, with the name Infest.

After Infest, the band changed their sound, and became more altern­at­ive than metal, and although their next album charted higher than Infest, it actu­ally sold fewer cop­ies. Their third album, Get­ting Away With Murder did even bet­ter, largely due to the track “Scars”, which was wildly pop­u­lar. They also toured with Slip­knot and Skindred around this time. Their fourth album was influ­enced by Slipknot’s Vol. 3, in that it was recor­ded in a man­sion. After this album, the band’s drum­mer left to go into rehab, and although this was ori­gin­ally planned to be a tem­por­ary depar­ture, Dave Buck­ner ended up leav­ing the band per­man­ently. Meta­morph­osis, the band’s next album, was released as they toured with a host of nu-metal/alternative bands. Papa Roach will release their first live album in August of this year.

There is a very clear pro­gres­sion in Papa Roach’s music that marks out the mat­ur­a­tion and growth of the band in a way that makes it very clear what dir­ec­tion the band have been head­ing in all along. Des­pite their big hit, “Last Resort”, fore­tell­ing the sui­cide of the Papa Roach for whom the band is named, the band’s lyr­ics tend to be rel­at­ively simple com­ment­ar­ies on life and love, with little mor­al­ising or philo­soph­ising. On Last.fm, their top tracks rep­res­ent a cross sec­tion of their albums, how­ever, which reflects the appeal that the band have regard­less of the type of music that they play.

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Image found here, released under a CC-BY-SA licence by Riktenkay