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It’s an inevitability in popular music these days. Whenever a pioneering band or two breaks into the mainstream in a big way, major labels, radio, and MTV can be depended upon to clog America’s collective ear canal with variations on the theme, in search of the Next Big Same Thing. The numbers are in, the people have spoken – this is what they want, and they’re going to get it. And get it. And get it. The lengthy processes involved in developing, recording, and marketing an act serve to keep even the flimsiest of sudden genres around for at least a couple of years. That the subsequent waves of product rarely match the excitement and originality of their progenitors is a given in any sonic trend; with something as one-dimensional and riff-oriented as the current rap-metal phenomenon, anyone could have predicted the runoff’s quick degeneration from mindless reproduction (see also Kottonmouth Kings) to outright crap (Disturbed, anyone?).
Often, bands with only the barest passing resemblance to What’s Hot get sucked through the floodgates. Usually, the timing works against them. Their single gets some spins along with everyone else’s, before becoming buried under a pile of soundalikes. The group’s modest success fades when whatever multi-hyphenated description they somehow got saddled with falls out of vogue, and they spend the rest of their short careers ranting to no one about how said multi-hyphenated description never fit them anyway.
Occasionally, however, this kind of mislabeled act does benefit from the second-hand association, riding both the trend and what sets them apart from it to pop-culture ubiquity, at least until the next big shift in tastes.
Enter Papa Roach, the Vacaville, California quartet presently straddling the top of the New Metal pyramid. Their punky, melodic sound contains at least enough rip-hop to get them into the race, but its other elements are why the group appears, for the time being, to be winning it. A casual perusal of their major-label debut, Infest, reveals as much punk, rock, and hardcore influence as that of the old chunk-and-rap. The band’s pop-minded songwriting, personal lyrics, and Cali-bred punk-ass look have endeared them to a disparate throng that stretches way beyond the ‘Nookie’ crowd. Their intense-yet-engaging single, ‘Last Resort’, is a bona fide across-the-board smash, and in the past several months, Papa Roach have scored the bewildering hat trick of playing on the Warped Tour, opening for Korn, and appearing on MTV’s pop-tot-intensive request show, TRL.
“Each group [of fans] can pick out their own stuff in our songs. I think that’s one of the big reasons why we’re being accepted by different people,” understates PR guitarist Jerry Horton.
For a band who spent six years firmly entrenched in the DIY school of procedure, releasing four albums on their own Onion Hardcore label while touring and being rejected by every imprint out there (“We thought we were ready from the beginning, and the labels were like, ‘no, you suck’,” laughs Horton), pop-radio success and teencentric show appearances must have come as something of a culture shock. But Horton and his cohorts aren’t about to close off avenues of exposure for coolness’ sake.
“It’s kind of weird, but it’s definitely a good thing. TRL and MTV and radio, it’s all helped us get our music out to as many people as we can, and that’s our main goal right now, to let as many people hear it as we can, and let them decide whether or not they like it,” he confirms. “That’s one thing about [our situation], we don’t take anything for granted. We know the fans are our most important commodity, and we’re gonna be good to our fans. Our whole career is focused on them, because without them, we have music, but nobody to play it for.”
Papa Roach gained a nationwide core of those fans before Infest was even released, thanks to the efforts of Streetwise Concepts and Culture. Taking a cue from the hip-hop community’s grassroots word-of-mouth approach to marketing new acts, Streetwise enlists an army of young pundits across the country to hand out cassette samplers, posters, and assorted swag wherever the cool kids congregate, and was instrumental in the success of PR, as well as other heavy acts such as Dope, Taproot, and, most hugely, Slipknot, who went platinum with a minimum of radio and no discernible MTV support. Virtually every heavily buzzed act riding the New Metal swell owes a debt to Streetwise, and while Papa Roach has had the benefit of airwave and video exposure, Horton acknowledges that the marketing company got them to the point where the media had little choice but to take notice.
“That was our sole means of promotion. They just helped us immensely,” he says. “Before the record came out, I got tons of emails from kids who got the sampler at the Static X show or at the Bizkit show, or whatever, asking when the CD was coming out. That played a huge role in getting our music out there. It was the best way for us to do it at the beginning, at that level, to build a buzz.”
By the time Infest dropped, ‘Last Resort’, about the suicide attempt of vocalist/lyricist Coby Dick’s best friend, was already connecting with scores of kids relating to the track’s tale of depression and disenchantment. Most of the disc, in fact, travels some pretty weighty territory, from divorce and alcoholism to dealing with Attention Deficit Disorder. Dick penned most of the lyrics as a personal form of therapy, unknowingly striking a chord with contemporary young America, most of whom find such subjects all too familiar, and not a few of whom are sick to death of pop music’s boy-band unreality. But while Papa Roach are happy to have provided a comforting voice (they’ve received numerous e-mails from fans confirming that ‘Last Resort’ helped them through their own personal trials), they’re not a ‘message’ band, or the voice of a generation, or licensed therapists; they’re just a rock group whose singer found catharsis in putting his troubles on paper.
“When Coby wrote the songs, it was all about himself. He was doing it as therapy, to come to a resolution in his life on those matters. And now all these other people are connecting and identifying with his subject matter, so it’s kind of been assumed that we have this responsibility,” says Horton. “It was just a coincidence.”
Coincidence or not, a hell of a lot of young music fans are obviously relating to Papa Roach, and the band is quite happy to be offering the mainstream consciousness something a little more meaty.
“I think kids are ready for something real, as opposed to the escapism and the candy pop stuff,” Horton insists. “That’s not bad, obviously a lot of people are into it, they get all the happy kids and we get all the fucked-up kids. And we don’t mind.”
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