17 March 2015 (gig)
17 March 2015
"Love it or hate it, nu-metal is back. With KoRn almost upstaging Slipknot on their UK tour earlier this year and Limp Bizkit ready to rock Reading & Leeds Festival in the summer, the marmite genre of the music world is as popular as ever. Continuing the resurgence, tonight sees Papa Roach play to a sold out Manchester Academy and whilst they’ve long left their rap rock days behind them they still remain a force to be reckoned with.
London mob The One Hundred do their best at rousing the filling venue with their Enter Shikari meets Crossfaith sound but despite the efforts of energetic frontman Jacob Field they do little to ignite interest in the crowd.
Flying all the way over from Japan for this tour are coldrain who fortunately fare better. Big riffs and bigger choruses are the order of the day here and although it’s apparent that the majority of the crowd have no idea who they are they quickly get heads banging. Definitely one to keep an eye out for!
The moment the house lights go down the first of many “Papa Roach” chants breaks out in the crowd giving the band a heroes welcome as they take to the stage. From the moment they burst into the title track off their latest release ‘Face Everything And Rise’ the atmosphere in the room is electric thanks in part to enigmatic frontman Jacoby Shaddix, a man with more energy than a Duracell rabbit. As he orchestrates the band through a relentless, wall to wall hit parade, Shaddix bounds across the stage like a machine, never stopping once for breath.
With a career spanning over twenty years Papa Roach have a tonne of material to choose from and although there’s a massive difference between the rap rock stylings of ‘Blood Brothers’ and the simpler hard rock sound to their newer material, as evidenced with a particularly rousing ‘Warriors’, every song is accompanied by a mass sing-a-long.
As they close their set with a triple threat encore of “Last Resort”, “Scars” and “...To Be Loved” tonight is further evidence, if it was needed, that Papa Roach are one of the most important bands to emerge from the early 2000s."
