Papa Roach is generally treated as the band from the Alternative New Metal community. Just like many other representatives of this genre, Papa Roach has started somewhere in mid 90s, somewhere in California area, and in the very beginning of the career suffered a well-known problem of musical non-uniqueness. Yet they have grown mature pretty fast. Their first successful album Infest wasn’t their debut, but it became triple-platinum and gave the band a worldwide popularity. Then came the constant tours, new records and other attributes of successful performer life. Many bands can seldom cope with this role. When walking by this common success path, artists can easily lose their originality and competitive abilities to stay on top. Thanks God Papa Roach decided to choose a different path to walk. Despite that fact that their biography sounds rather standard the band has never stopped in searching their own way of development. The musicians are making the portrait of the band album by album. Staying devoted to the Alternative Metal they always try to use new approaches to the music and their new album The Paramour Session only proves aforesaid.
The Paramour Session just like Papa Roach’s previous work Getting Away With Murder has no rapcore vocals, which are so characteristic for the corporate rock machine where so many bands sound the same. Quite the contrary, Papa Roach strives to more traditional approach to hard rock songwriting and uses the vocal talent of Jacoby Shaddix in its full measure. The band produces great musical chemistry on this album and each track here is really solid and has its special sounding. For example, the second track Alive gives a reason to turn up the volume to get a killing portion of heavy guitar riffing and solid and brisk rhythm section. Whereas the song The World Around You is a melodic piece which is close to a rock mainstream and No More Secrets reminds of late 80s Hard’n’Heavy. The most significant feature of this album is that Papa Roach really care about the way they represent their material to the listener. Dynamics, expression compositional structure, they make it all as flexible as the song calls for it.
The Paramour Sessions has the feel and ease of a good rock band making great music with the confidence and assurance of a group who knows how to make music to please itself. This album delivers the hard, the heavy, and the melodic sounds of the modern rock mainstream. It's nice to see Howard Benson standing behind an album that doesn't sound like a typical Benson production, perhaps Jacoby Shaddix and the guys in Papa Roach have listened to a lot of other modern rock albums and know what not to do. In any event Paramount Sessions is a good example of consistent professional development of the band. Papa Roach keep on moving away from their rapcore passion of early years. They rely on melody more than in any of their previous releases. This approach has widened and enforced the creativeness of the band which is not even thinks of refusing its real music basis of heavy alternative metal. Paramour Sessions shows the direction, which the band is going to choose and develop in the future. Judging by the band’s history this direction is going to be just the right thing.
Lights & SoundsYellowcard has found their niche with Lights & Sounds, moving past the quiet, undiscovered talent whose key sell factor was the fact that they had a violin. This album is definitely worthy of the 3-year wait their fans endured