Best Track: “Still Swingin”
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2012
With Papa Roach’s eighth studio album “The Connection,” fans can expect to be INFESTed once more. The band that had us screaming “this is my last resort” from their hit album “Infest” is back and reminding us why they are “still the ones swinging.”
Taking things back to their roots of rock-rap with tracks like the anthem and lead single “Still Swinging,” Papa Roach’s “The Connection’” reCONNECTS us with them. We thought we lost them with the albums “The Paramour Session” and “Metamorphosis” as front man Jacoby Shaddix and the band explored the “hello kitty” trails of soft alternative sounds and “poppy” beats. But “Still Swingin,” the album’s opener and album anthem, grabs you by the throat and reminds us who’s Papa.
“Count me in I’ll turn it out/ I’m killin’ it you’re burnin’ out” Shaddix beastly spits on the mic moments before demanding your respect with the catchy hook “Forever we will stay! We are the ones still swingin!” And believe me, they got my respect. Bass player Tobin Esperance is crazy sick on the chords of this track. You’ll find yourself playing air guitar, mimicking his finger work. Save some energy, though, because the dubstep ending will have you moshing your way through the plaza.
After such a beastly track, Papa Roach slows the metronome down a bit over the next few tracks. The love ballad “Leader of the Broken Hearts” will give you that same feeling you got when you fell in love with “Scars” off their “Getting Away with Murder” album. Indeed, “pain is real” as Shaddix cries out in this too-real track about “risk[ing] everything and still survive.” If you’ve been brokenhearted, this track will be company to your tears.
But I think the biggest hidden gem of “The Connection” comes near the ending of the album with the superlative instrumentation and raging chants of “Walking Dead.” Immediately the schizo-bass work and dark drums of the opening takes you away from wherever you are and places you in the film “Zombie Land,” bat in one hand and shot gun in the other. But it won’t be zombies that you’re killing here. “Uncover your eyes/uncover the truth/and realize we are the walking dead,” cries out Shiddax.
Papa Roach can never let us go without grabbing us by our temples, shaking us, and enlightening us. The album was released just before Shaddix’s vocal surgery left him silent and in recovery. What a way to say it all before being forced quiet! The Papa Roach that had our throats sore while yelling “this is my last resort” right before falling to our knees and crying “you tear my heart open” is back on top in their rightful spot and as Shaddix states in “Still Swingin,” they’re “never coming down!”
