PAPA ROACH singer Jacoby Shaddix spoke to Dammy Wimmer Presents about the band’s upcoming follow-up to 2019’s “Who Do You Trust?” album, tentatively due in early 2022.
“We’re always trying to push the bar,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “We’re always trying to raise the bar. We’re always trying to bring rock into the future. We’re always trying to be ahead of the game and come original with it. And sometimes we hit the mark and sometimes we miss it. But I’m telling you, this time I think we nailed it, man. I’m just over the moon. I’ll say it, if we ever made a Grammy-worthy rock album, this is it — straight up.
“I think the process of making this record, we kicked it off the right way,” he continued. “We were locked up in quarantine, and we just kept FaceTiming with each other, calling each other, like, ‘Dude, I’m going crazy.’ Tobin [Esperance, PAPA ROACH bassist] hits me up, ‘Bro, what are we gonna do, man? We’ve gotta do something. We’ve gotta get creative.’ And so we all locked up in this house down south in a place called Temecula and stayed there for a month and just started writing music. And it was like a floodgate opened. And it was, like, 24-7 — literally there was music happening for the better part of 24 hours a day, whether it’s editing or engineering or writing or recording or tracking. And by the time we got done with this process at this house, we all left like we were just destroyed. We had no energy left. Everybody needed to just get home and recharge. But it was such a great bonding experience for the boys and our producers and our engineers and just a really special time in our lives. And a lot of walls came down emotionally between us and it really made for great music. And we aired some grievances in the process and really got through some stuff together and came out on the other side of the process of this record feeling like, ‘Man, we just went through hell and heaven to make this record. We’ve got something special.’ And it’s just really exciting.”
PAPA ROACH capped another fruitful year in 2021, after celebrating the 20th anniversary of its landmark album “Infest” last year. Throughout the year, the band teased three new tracks from its forthcoming LP. The first track released to radio, “Kill The Noise”, just completed a four-week run at no. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart. This follows “The Ending”, which peaked at no. 1 earlier this year (giving PAPA ROACH their ninth no. 1 single and mind-blowing 20th Top 5 single to date). 2021 also marks the band’s third Grammy nomination for the remix of “Born For Greatness” by Spencer Bastian a.k.a. CYMEK and the relaunch of the band’s own label, New Noize Records, in partnership with ADA Worldwide (WMG‘s independent label and artist services arm). Capping the year off, the partnership has already achieved 100 million streams to date.
This past October, PAPA ROACH released a new single called “Dying To Believe”. The track, produced by WZRD BLD a.k.a. Drew Fulk (ICE NINE KILLS, MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE), is a call for human unity and harmony, despite any differences people have.
“Dying To Believe” arrived weeks after the release of PAPA ROACH‘s previous two singles: “Swerve”, which was a collaboration with FEVER 333 frontman Jason Aalon Butler and Los Angeles rapper Sueco; and “Kill The Noise”. All three tracks are expected to appear on PAPA ROACH‘s upcoming eleventh studio album, due via the band’s own record company, New Noize Records, Inc., under exclusive license to ADA.
In January 2021, 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 in March 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.
“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 was helmed by Jason Evigan.
In December 2020, PAPA ROACH released a five-song EP, “20/20”, featuring “new takes on old jams,” including “Last Resort” and “Scars”.
