Papa Roach

support Minus + Chronic Future
author PP date 30/09/04 venue Astoria, London, UK

Before the concert I'd been warned of how fanatical the British really are about the concerts. I got to the location about 15 minutes before the doors opened and the line was about 250 metres long! Once I got in, the first warmup band was already playing. The front (first 6-8 rows) was totally packed already so it didn't give me a chance to get any closer just yet. The venue, one of the most famous venues in the world indeed, was completely sold out. 1600 people fit into the two levels at Astoria, which is more like a club-like venue if you compare it to other venues like Wembley Stadium in London, or for example Forum in Copenhagen.

The first warmup band, Minus, were a bunch of guys looking a lot like Puddle of Mudd back in 2001. Long, over-the-shoulders type of curly hair and no shirts. Their sound was really old-schoolish soft-metal pre-grunge but still not too far away from Puddle of Mudd's original sound. They overdid their perfomance and got pretty much boo'ed of the stage. The next band on line was Chronic Future. Now I don't really know how to describe their music with any other way than: Rage Against The Machine done the Crazy Town's Butterfly way. Their lead singer literally had the same voice as Crazy Town's vocalist, and he rapped every single verse. They sounded literally like a really softcore, poppy version of RATM. Not to say they were bad or anything, after all they are supporting Papa Roach also on their US tour together with as big band as TRUSTCompany.

Papa Roach

It was time to get Coby Dick & company on stage. They kicked off with the strong "Dead Cell". It really lit up the crowd, and already during the first song we had several rings of moshing, people literally beating each other up. Specially the chorus' where their lyrics go "DEAD CELL! DEAD CELL!" really got the crowd shouting with the song. Right after this it was time to get the first single from their unsuccessful album "Lovehatetragedy", namely 'She Loves Me Not'.

The crowd at the concert was mainly hardcore fans of Papa Roach. As far as I could see nearly everyone knew the lyrics to all of the songs, even the new ones! So you can just imagine ~1600 people singing to all of the lyrics in a completely closed club-like venue. The noise from the crowd was probably louder than Coby Dick screaming into the amplified microphone.

Just before Papa Roach played their song "Scars", Coby Dick surprised probably everyone in the crowd with his honesty. He said something similar to: "After we finished touring with the last album [Lovehatetragedy], I was feeling shit. I looked in the mirror and I didn't see a member of Papa Roach there. I saw a guy who literally was close to suicide, with tears in his eyes. I would like to thank all of our fans, you guys, who sticked with us through the bad times, we are back now. This song is about that specific moment." He explicitly stated that their previous album was shit (indeed). And in general, his involvement with the crowd was great - alot of talking in between of the songs, and a lot of praising of the crowd. He seemed to really enjoy doing the show @ London that night and he loved his crowd. "It has been a really long time since I last stood on stage with a really big smile on my face and actually meant it too!" to quote a thing he said. He also jumped into the crowd and was singing/screaming in front of about 10 fans to their great appreciation. He gave out high five's and generally was being really friendly to the crowd.

They finished the gig (after the necessary encore of course) with "Infest". It's perhaps their most known song after "Last Resort" from the first album. And it's a great song, too! Overall, the concert was pretty good. It wasn't the best I've seen but they did pretty good. Go see them live if you have the chance!

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