There’s a few bands which, when they’re in town, make me sit up and go “Hello!”, and then prod people incessantly in order to whip up a posse so as to be able to share the experience with. These guys are one! Sadly, this was a Thursday night and so there was a distinct lack of volunteers to share effervescent Ali with, and thus I ended up on my tod, in a packed arena in Brum after a long day at work myself. But did it reduce my enjoyment? Not one iota!
Now, I’ve been to some concerts in my time. Five Finger Death Punch in Antwerp, Def Leppard in Vegas, Iron Maiden in Amsterdam and Deep Purple in Manchester to name but a few but none have left me quite so invigorated as Papa Roach in Wolverhampton in October 2006 did, back when all this was fields! My original review for my own journal (ok, ok, it was a blog entry, but journal sounds better! Sue me!) has a quote which reads “The singer looked as if he truly enjoyed himself… big grin from start to finish, and it spilled over. “Scars” was exceptional, as were “Last Resort”, “To Be Loved”, “Angels and Insects”, and “Getting away with Murder”! I would say it’s the best I’ve been to. I felt infused with energy from the music, and the shared experience. Sometimes I just tingle from it. The stomach muscles (yes i have some, they’re just not so conspicuous as they used to be!) tighten.”, and while I’m older now (and the aforementioned abdominals have grown better at hiding!) nothing seems to have changed about the experience, aided by the fact that, all of the songs named above featured again.
It should be noted that the support bands played their part in creating an atmosphere too. Sleep Theory had eight songs to play with and to be fair, anyone who’s Spotify has eight of their top ten songs in double digit millions is going to be well worth a listen as long as they’re at least slightly aligned with the main band. Seven of those eight were played here, including “Static” which has an oddly familiar Savage Garden meets Pendulum meets Combichrist sound to it, but it’s certainly well loved. “Words are Worthless”, a slower offering, maintains that feeling, clean vocal, over contained but nevertheless hinting at aggressive music. “Gravity” knocks the Combichrist out of the equation, and would fit on an early 2000s compilation with the rockier Avril Lavigne offerings. As a larger exposure to UK audiences go, this show will have doubtless seen their popularity grow. So far so good!
Landmvrks too had eight songs to play with, and in contrast to Sleep Theory they threw the whole “contained” part of said aggression out the window without bothering to open it first, singing like a band who’s suddenly found their Facebook feed inexplicably full of James Blunt adverts, and having watched one and laughed, watched another, laughed more, and then the enormity of what they’ve just listened to while watching them has hit them and thus they requires vast amounts of personal cleansing, and it’s manifesting on stage as to the enormity of this task. An initial almost rap turns into screaming, possibly in French, then switching to English. “Throttle” springs to mind, and if you wish to attribute that to having “Full” preceding this, or “James Blunt” as a suffix, that’s up to you, but it’s safe to say they mean business with “Creature” as quite the opener. Curiously if I can still use Spotify as a metric Landmvrks don’t have nearly the same popularity as the preceding band (or James Blunt for that matter) and this begs the speculation that Jacoby et al. have done this on purpose for exposure of a band they’d like to see grow. “Blood Red” is interesting, There’s almost spoken word as an intro, drifting from French in English in a style not dissimilar in meter to the verses of Jimmy Nail’s “Ain’t No Doubt” into angry angst-ridden staccato screams, and then back to an almost delicate reflective vocal, and then back to what I can only guess at anger/vitriol again. Add to this the guitarist channelling David Lee Roth’s high kicking habits while performing and it’s an entertaining cauldron of visual and musical, and all before 9pm!
Papa Roach land on stage at around ten past nine, complete with a big screen projection of them coming onto the stage from the bowels of the Utilita where the dressing rooms are housed. They’ve not skimped on the setlist, with 20 listed but with a couple of Nu Metal medleys incorporated that escalated up to probably 23ish. There’s an almost instant call for a pit to open out and this is greeted with quite the enthusiasm although it resulted in a fight kicking off about eight tracks in resulting in the concert stopping for a few minutes as Jacoby had to explain the pit etiquette to a couple of morons. That aside, it’s fair to say the energy here was just as I remembered it 20 years previously. “Between Angels and Insects” as a opener set the tone, and the energy stayed palpable from then on, with the crowd almost out singing them initially!
There’s a few nice touches which need acknowledgement withing the set. Landmvrks singer Florent Salfati gets a guest vocal on “See U in Hell” and similarly Cullen Moore from Sleep Token gets a crack at “Born For Greatness”, there’s nods to The Prodigy with “Firestarter”, Korn with “Blind”, Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” and System of a Down’s “Chop Suey” and a dodgy pair of Ozzy Osborne socks presumably bought specifically for Brum! Know your audience, executed… with aplomb!
Back to the music: “Help” went down an absolute storm, and was notable for the bass guitar’s prominence as well as a clean lead guitar too. “Always Wandering” isn’t far behind and they feel tied together as they’re a tad more sentimental than some of their other tracks, especially for the audience. It felt… observational and reflective on the night, and it’s not a surprise when there’s a nod to the fact they’ve been doing this since 1993, which leads nicely into “Scars”. It’s emotional again, even for a stonehearted troglodyte like myself! There’s a contrast to be noted here: For the vast majority of songs, there’s been crowd surfers, perhaps the most landing (or not!) on “She Loves Me Not”, but they’d almost exclusively been guys, but for “Scars” it’s the lasses turn! Make of that what you will! This also gets Jerry Horton front and centre with Shaddix as the rest of the band take something of a step back for the track.
There’s a point in the concert which epitomises quite how the evening went. For this tour, cunningly called “The Rise of the Roach Tour”, it’s probably the intro on the first track because of the energy it creates, but if it needed any cementing that came with “Liar”. We’re told to crouch… and…. BOUNCE!! And bounce the place did! It’s been something of an irksome thing that, each time previous to this when I’ve been to the Utilita it’s been all seated affairs, including in the stalls, but tonight this was very much not the case. However, the surrounding areas were indeed seated, and grateful I’d been (sorry, one too many Star Wars films as a kid!) after 12 hours in a chocolate factory beforehand, but who am I to refuse a rockstar? The floor held up and took its punishment impressively well as several thousand people were up and down like a Syrian regime!
By the time “Last Resort” began most people over the age of 40 (of which there were many, myself included!) will have had calf muscles like golf balls but it didn’t matter. For a song which is 26 years old, so literally half my age, it still feels fresh and regularly makes my top twenty most played songs, coming in at number 5 of my most played songs from the last 6 years according to a somewhat erratic listing from Spotify, which also insists the 9-minute album version of The Pet Shop Boy’s “Always on my Mind”, is a place higher!
“Viscus rumours!” I protest only to be asked:
“Surely Al, you mean “Vicious”?” is doubtless you, the reader’s reply, but no, I did not err in my command of the vernacular. It’s a thick and gloopy rumour and seems far too sticky and hard to get rid of!!
I digress! There was a chunk of “We Will Rock You” inserted in for added effect to finish the show, and it seemed apt indeed. I’d seen Papa Roach again since that first time in Wolves, somewhere in deepest darkest Amsterdam with Stone Sour also in attendance and that was a fantastic evening too, but it was surpassed here due to both the size of the setlist, and the fact that I was back home in the UK. The train to a dark and dreary Wolves was packed with happy (and bruised!) fans like myself, oblivious to the elements and simply taking pleasure from the shared experience we’d all just enjoyed, and it’s fair to say if my life was indeed to be cut into pieces there would now be one more segment where Papa Roach feature favourably and after tonight I’d not be the only one.
Of that I’m certain.