PAPA ROACH Is Recording 15 Songs For New Album; 'This One's Fire,' Says TONY PALERMO

PAPA ROACH recently entered a studio in Southern California to begin recording the follow-up to last year's "Who Do You Trust?" album for a tentative mid-2021 release. Speaking to Ned of the Waterloo, Iowa radio station Rock 108, drummer Tony Palermo said (see video below): "A couple of weeks ago, I just finished 15 or so new drum tracks for all the new songs. We've been kind of posting stuff about it, so it's not a secret. Obviously, being quarantined, we're trying to get creative, and what can we do with this time? And it's, like, well, no better time than to write a record."

As for the musical and lyrical direction of the new PAPA ROACH material, Tony said: "I say this with every record, 'cause it's always exciting to write and record music, but this one's fire, man. It just has some deep cuts on it. And oh, man, it feels so good to play drums too. I had a great session. Jacoby's [Shaddix, vocals] rapping some more. It seems like his raps on this — he's… I don't wanna say angrier, but he's got more intensity behind his raps. He has a lot to be concerned about now, and expressing your mind through music is one thing that he loves to do. Lyricists are always looking for that inspiration, and there's been an overabundance of that this year."

Asked when fans can expect to hear the new PAPA ROACH album, Tony said: "I'm not sure, actually. Jacoby is down right now in L.A., just finishing up some vocals, and then we'll go through the mixing and mastering process and all that. But normally, these things don't come out [until] six months after the recording process. Obviously, a single will be out before. And I wanna be optimistic and say I'm hearing a few things about maybe, possibly summer touring of next year. If this vaccine kind of holds and if people are willing to take it… We'll see what happens. We have to have something out before we tour."

In September, Shaddix told Shroom of the WEBN radio station about the new PAPA ROACH music: "This stuff is fire. It feels so good to be back in and creating music with the guys. Especially 'cause we're not on the road, it's a good thing for us to do is to get together and live our purpose. Creating is, I believe, my life's purpose — writing songs and connecting with people through music.

"The stuff is, some of it's really aggressive and abrasive and angry, and some of it is very self-reflective as well in the sense of, like, I'm really digging deep into some stuff," he revealed.

"We just finished up a song yesterday. It's called 'No Apologies', and it's a song I wrote to my father in the sense of forgiveness for what we've been through as a father and son in our lives and how we've kind of just not really been connected. It was very healing for me. I can't wait to go find that old man and play him that song and just have that moment of closure and healing for us. I think that's important, and the music gives us that opportunity."

This past July, Shaddix told Rock Sound TV that PAPA ROACH's next album will be released through band's own record company. "We are in partnership with Warner/ADA, and so it's like an artist services group," he explained. "And we're gonna do that for an album and see how it works out. We've been super focused in the creative marketing behind what we do and the imaging and the videos and the messaging and everything, we were, like, let's take it in our hands and see where we can go with it and try it for an album."

Jacoby also said that PAPA ROACH recently completed a new song called "Bloodline" which he described as "P. ROACH meets SYSTEM OF A DOWN meets DEVO." He said: "I played it for my kids and my wife, and everybody was, like, 'That's fire. That's sick.' There's something nutty about where it's almost got, in a sense, a little ENTER SHIKARI-ness to it. I've been a big fan of those guys and just how kind of kooky they are. They've always been nuts. They've been an influence on me as a creative person for some years. Not to say that the whole record will sound like that, because we never sound like one thing."

"Who Do You Trust?" was released in January 2019. The disc was produced by Nick "RAS" Furlong and Colin Cunningham except for the song "Top Of The World", which is helmed by Jason Evigan.