Artist Interviews

Q&A: Papa Roach

By | Published on Wednesday 18 August 2010

Papa Roach

Formed in 1993, punk-metallers Papa Roach released their debut album ‘Infest’ in 2000 through Geffen, going on to sell over three million copies worldwide.

The band have since released four albums, including last year’s ‘Metamorphosis’. Their latest album, ‘Time For Annihilation’, features live tracks recorded on their 2009 tour with Shinedown, plus five new studio recordings. With the album out on 30 Aug via Eleven Seven Music, plus new single ‘Kick In The Teeth’ out on Monday, we caught up with frontman Jacoby Shaddix to ask the Same Six.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I started out playing music as a sixteen year old kid in high school in California with nothing else to do.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
We felt like it was time for a change – we’d pretty much just left the major label we were with in the US and were just asking ourselves where do we go from here, what do we do at this point? We’d had loads of messages from fans wanting us to do a live record, so we decided to go with that, it being something we’d never done before. We recorded the last five shows of the tour we did with Shinedown, and decided to include some b-sides from back in the day. The five new songs carry the spirit of how the band play live and mix well with the old stuff.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
This time, we went home to Sacremento and camped out at our Red House studio and laid down our original ideas for the new songs. Then we went to New Jersey to record the tracks with David Bendeth, who thought our ideas were cool but wanted to expand on them and “make them great”. Which was definitely challenging for me as an artist, because that’s hard to hear! But it pushed us and we managed to evolve the sound, and it allowed us to discover the rock n roll band inside us. We played around with different beats, loops, sequences and just ended up going in a new direction.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?

We started out pretty much all listening to the same music, but over the years our tastes have changed as we’ve each evolved as individuals. Our main influences when we started out as a band were Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Metallica, Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Deftones and Wu-Tang Clan. For me right now, I listen to a wide range of music, from Portishead to Social Distortion to Faith No More and Led Zeppelin. And I love the new Deftones album.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Welcome to the mother fucking party. And, I’d say come see us live, that’s where you see the energy of the band.

Q6 What are your ambitions for the album, and for the future?
To go out and tour the world, just do a sell out tour and meet cool people doing it. Test people with the music, make them high and elated.

MORE>> www.paparoach.com



READ MORE ABOUT: