PAPA ROACH's JERRY HORTON On Being Experimental And Trying New Things: 'It's Something We've Always Done'

Ethan of the V100 radio station in Topeka, Kansas recently conducted an interview with PAPA ROACH guitarist Jerry Horton. You can now listen to the chat below.

Asked how important it is for PAPA ROACH to make a different-sounding album every time they go in to record, Jerry said: "We've done it ever since [the band's inception]. Even before [2000's] 'Infest', we sounded different before that. So it's just something we've always done.

"Working with these guys, [producers] Colin [Brittain] and Ras [Nicholas Furlong], that we did on the last two albums, it really reinstilled the philosophy of being experimental and trying new stuff and really just loving it again.

"In the past, we've worked with some incredible, legendary rock producers, and it was amazing, and those guys are legendary for a reason, but we felt like we were getting sort of pushed through a machine to a certain point," he continued. "And with these guys, they're younger than we are, so they have that passion, and it just brought us back to when we were kids. And we just tried everything. So for this record [2019's 'Who Do You Trust?'], instead of taking our influences and melding those into our sound, we kind of took the opposite approach of taking our influences and injecting our sound a little bit into them. So what we ended up with was kind of more akin to a playlist that somebody might create with different vibes or whatever, but it's all one band."

Pressed about whether PAPA ROACH ended up with a few extra songs this time around that got left on the cutting-room floor that might make an appearance in the future, Jerry said: "Yes. That's kind of how we've been operating the past 10, 15 years, mostly because we've learned from experience that if you don't record it, if you don't save it, it's gone forever. So we would sometimes say, 'Oh, how did that riff go? You remember that one?' And the other guy would kind of have a blank stare and go, 'I don't know.' And then the other guy would go, 'Oh, that was amazing.' So we realize now that if we have a song that we're writing and it doesn't immediately just make us go, 'Yeah, that's awesome,' we set it aside and we save it. Because eventually, probably we're gonna come back to it with fresh ears and be able to work it into a song. And that's how a few songs on this album, actually, came about — they were on the cutting-room floor of the last, or maybe even from four or five years ago."

He added: "We have what we call the 'riff bank,' and it's sort of a starting point that we go to if we don't have any immediate ideas."

PAPA ROACH's tenth studio album, "Who Do You Trust?", was released in January. The disc was helmed by Furlong and Brittain except for "Top Of The World", which was produced by Jason Evigan.