By Slick Nick
For many people growing up at the turn of the noughties, Papa Roach were a big deal, helping to prize kids away from the shackles of Craig David and Reebok Classics, putting them firmly on the path of listening to bad metal and dressing like a second cousin of Wednesday Adams.
‘Last Resort’ from 2000 was the big one, the single/video which confidently earmarked all the key sub demographics under the banner of ‘high school bully victims’ that would be their core audience by featuring them in their bedrooms listening to Papa Roach, or exercising. Or both.
Casting aside their nu metal roots for this third attempt, what people were left with was an even more boring rock album than previous efforts, but the band certainly looked a lot better in their videos thanks to a bandwagon jumping visit to the hair salon for some cod-emo styling.
Lead single ‘Getting Away With Murder’ aped RATM’s efforts by parodying stock exchange workery with the tried and tested message that money = bad. We should only aspire to living a lonely bedroom fuelled existence listening to bad music rather than getting out there and making something of ourselves. Thanks, lead singer Jacoby Shaddix, for that nugget of inspiration. Now where did I put that Velvet Revolver CD?
Mercifully there were only two singles, but the final one ‘Scars’ treaded depths of badness that even the most ardent Roach hater would have been taken aback by, sounding as worthless as a Puddle Of Mudd b-side.
Every one of the fourteen songs on offer is much of a muchness – you get four chords played in exactly the same time, you get some poor vocals and unmemorable melodic breaks, and lyrics fuelled by radio-rock despair and self-pity (which I don’t buy for a second because Shaddix married his highschool sweetheart and appears to be making a comfortable living).
The song-writing is questionable at the best of times, as if ideas that were jammed in rehearsal were slapped together to fill up an album worth of material. Quite often, choruses will not match the tone set by the previous bars of music. Above all else, the music is painfully boring and if there’s one thing rock should never be, it’s boring.
Nothing to see here
Kudos to Papa Roach though for realising their musical ineptitude and sticking to what they know how to ruin best – butt metal. Quite often, once a band receives sperm cells from overzealous rock critics over a period of time, the acclaim can go to their heads and makes them think they are worthy of delving into more complex and challenging musical genres – not these guys though.
Finally, I had to listen to this album on Spotify to review it. Usually I click the next songs to avoid the adverts, but that wasn’t needed here because no adverts came on anyway. Even Spotify’s infrastructure was wise to the crapness of this album and realised that hardly anyone would ever want to hear it again.
Getting away with recording tedious rock music
Pop Peelings 
Agree? Disagree? Discuss.