Papa Roach News

(6/17/02, 1 p.m. ET) - With the release Tuesday (June 18) of Papa Roach's latest album, Lovehatetragedy, fans not only will discover a band that has moved beyond rap-rock, but might recognize a wider ranging vocal ability in frontman Jacoby Shaddix.

Shaddix says that producer Brendan O'Brien helped him expand on his vocal skills, in great part by having the band alter the key in which many of the songs were played by half a step. Shaddix tells LAUNCH that it was a creative breakthrough for him. "It sounds like we got 10 times better, but it was just like, we just put the song in the right place for us to be able to perform it, you know? 'Cause for a while it'd be like, 'Oh, you can't sing, dude. You're suckin'. Why you sucking today?' Well, OK, my voice, it's like, 'I can't push it all the way up there,' so we were, like, 'OK, how can we remedy it, you know, and still make it all work?' And that really helped."

Shaddix tells LAUNCH that his vocals and the group's musicianship as a whole were things that the group set out to improve upon. "That was something that I wanted to prove to myself--just singing, you know? 'Cause it's like, you sing for a band, you want to be able to use your voice and be able to manipulate it in a million different ways. That was a goal for the whole band--just to take their playing ability a step up, challenge ourselves, you know? 'Cause it's like, if you just kinda like become complacent and go, 'OK, well it ain't broke, don't fix it,' it's like, 'Well, it ain't broke but you could like, trick it out.'"

Papa Roach will celebrate the release of Lovehatetragedy with a performance Tuesday (June 18) on the roof of a Best Buy electronics store in West Los Angeles.

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

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