PAPA ROACH singer Jacoby Shaddix spoke to Andy Hall of the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3 about the progress of the recording sessions for the band’s upcoming follow-up to 2019’s “Who Do You Trust?” album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We are done with the record. It’s being mastered right now. And this record is — how do I explain it? It’s the best PAPA ROACH album we’ve ever written and recorded in our entire career. I’ll go as far as to say, like, if we ever made a record that could be nominated for a Grammy, this would be the record — straight up. It breaks boundaries, walls. It’s so inspired. It’s just got ill depth — moments where I was just, like, ‘Do I just go there or do I hold back?’ And it was no holds barred. It was just, like, ‘Just go for it.’ And I think that that’s what really makes the album special — that we were willing to just take risks, but in a way that’s not self-indulgent and, ‘Oh, we’re such artists now.’ It’s a ripping record.”
He continued: “We’ve been wanting to write a song that’s one of the lead singles for the album that would be the album opener and the show opener — one of those songs that just does all that. And we’ve been trying to do that since the beginning of our career, and we’ve never been able to land on it — never been able to write that song that could be that one. And we finally did. And it’s just, ‘Phew.’ Just wait, dude. It’s like the kabuki drop, the confetti cannons, the explosions, the glitter flying out of the sky — all that. It’s just one of those moments that’s gonna off in the show. And it’s just one of those songs that we just channel some ferocious rock energy on it. It’s just like a ticking time bomb, this album. It’s gonna go off.”
Jacoby went into more detail about the making of the new PAPA ROACH album, saying: “I went a little nuts, though. I fell off the wagon for a minute while we were making this record. I was really just anxious and stressed. I didn’t start drinking again, but I was smoking weed for a while. And that stuff, it fucked me up, bro, to be honest, man — it messed me up. So I was, like, ‘I’ve gotta get clean and sober. I can’t just be sober. I’ve gotta be clean.’ So I started over with my sobriety. I kind of had to pull myself out of this darkness for a minute. But this record, part of that process was me kind of losing myself a little bit. But it made for some really brutally honest, terrifying moments in my life. Sometimes that tortured self, in a sense, kind of makes for good art. And not that I went through that for the art; I just was kind losing it for a minute.”
Last July, Shaddix told Rock Sound TV that PAPA ROACH‘s next album will be released through band’s own record company. “We are in partnership with Warner/ADA, and so it’s like an artist services group,” he explained. “And we’re gonna do that for an album and see how it works out. We’ve been super focused in the creative marketing behind what we do and the imaging and the videos and the messaging and everything, we were, like, let’s take it in our hands and see where we can go with it and try it for an album.”
In January, a snippet of a brand new PAPA ROACH song called “Stand Up” was included in commercial for Ultimate Fighting Championship‘s (UFC) partnership with ESPN.
PAPA ROACH‘s second greatest-hits collection, “Greatest Hits Vol. 2: The Better Noise Years”, was released on March 19 on Better Noise Music.
“Greatest Hits Vol. 2 – The Better Noise Years” includes 12 of the band’s top 10 hits released between 2010 to 2019 as well as three previously unreleased remixes and two unreleased acoustic recordings recorded live at the YouTube Studios in New York City.
PAPA ROACH‘s latest album, “Who Do You Trust?”, was released in January 2019. The disc was produced by Nick “RAS” Furlong and Colin Cunningham except for the song “Top Of The World”, which is helmed by Jason Evigan.
In December, PAPA ROACH released a five-song EP, “20/20”, featuring “new takes on old jams,” including “Last Resort” and “Scars”.
