Papa Roach
F.E.A.R.
Release Date: Jan 27, 2015
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Heavy Metal, Pop-Metal
Record label: Eleven Seven
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Album Review: F.E.A.R. by Papa Roach
Average, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 6/10
The ninth studio album from California's Papa Roach, 2015's F.E.A.R. finds the journeyman hard rock outfit delivering more of its bombastic, high-energy sound. F.E.A.R. was produced by Kevin Churko (Ozzy Osbourne, Five Finger Death Punch) with assistance from his son Kane Churko, and the album's title is an acronym that stands for "Face Everything And Rise." The dark, aggressive irony behind this sentiment remains consistent with the angry, angst-ridden tone that the band has been narrowly hitting for almost two decades, telegraphing from the first moment of the title track that this is not a record intended to win new listeners, but it should please longtime fans of the group.
Based on rating 2/5
Like Dorian Gray with a blowout, nu-metal holdovers Papa Roach have made their latest album sound like an eerie time capsule from the early 2000s. Between the airy synth breakdowns copped from old Linkin Park LPs on songs like "Face Everything and Rise" and "Never Have to Say Goodbye" to woe-is-me lyrics like "all that’s left is the emptiness inside of me," on "Broken as Me," the band thoroughly revels in its arrested development. Singer Jacoby Shaddix even raps a humble-brag about getting past the "money, the fame, the booze, the girls" on the pity party "Gravity." Somebody please tell him that, though his band may still be on the charts, MTV has canceled TRL.
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