Papa Roach - Infest Review

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Tracklist:
1. Infest
2. Last Resort
3. Broken Home
4. Dead Cells
5. Between Angels and Insects
6. Blood Brothers
7. Revenge
8. Snakes
9. Never Enough
10. Binge
11. Thrown Away

Release Date: 2000

user rating

3.2
good

Chart.

other reviews

The JoZ (3)
...

Pedro B. (2.5)
Half irresistible clichÃ©s, half boring progression, one hundred percent average....

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On 19 Lists

4.0
excellent

Neoteric EMERITUS (104 Reviews)

2006-03-31 | 59 comments | 4,529 views

Okay, time to do this but first here is my little history on why this album was so important for me. Picture me back in 2000 when I was 8, my friend had the album and showed me Last Resort. It blew me away with its angst atmosphere and the crazy power of the music. This is what got me into music and it is also what inspired me to pick up a guitar. I was always getting in trouble for the regular swearing throughout but do I care at all? How about me getting in trouble at school for singing the lyrics with the swear words? That didn’t bother me either, this was the thing and it was powerful stuff.

Fast forward to where I am in 2006, I was looking through my old CD collection in my deep wardrobe and lifted this out. I put it on and it still really appealed to me, not in the way I was back then as in “This is my bible!" but more like “Hey this is quite groovy!" I have come to the conclusion that Papa Roach were one of the best nu-metal bands for that time period. As it starts, I was surprised as I never knew if the musicians were good or not back then. The best points in the band are Tobin and Jerry. Tobin is quite a good bassist and he is pretty audible throughout the album with some fun bass fills. You’d be amazed but in Between Angels And Insects there is a small bass solo, not complicated or anything but it’s these small things which make the song so much sweeter. Jerry on the other hand may not be the most technical or anything and all the songs on this album is in drop-D but he provides some great riffs which are easy to play but are really catchy.

While not bad, the remaining band members are more of a low point. Coby is a typical nu-metal vocalist with him just rapping most of the time with maybe some melodic singing in the chorus. The rapping was great back in the day but now that I look back on it, it ain’t that great. David is quite a lovable fellow but his drumming is just so simple that it bores me a lot. Yeah it keeps the beat but it could have been so much better. The main thing I liked about this album is that it is eleven tracks with no filler or interruptions, as soon as the last track finished I knew I’d get another treat when the next one started. No wonder, some of the tracks here are killer and while they all follow the same formula each time, there was enough difference to see what was so good about each track. That is also a bad thing though as none of the tracks go out their boundary except the hidden track on Thrown Away but I’m not really bothered with it.

The lyrics are a bit obvious and cheesy. The lyrics are based on all the angst things that they used to sing about. Lyrics range from suicide, a broken home, love and the big city. The lyrics are never that smart and some are quite dumb but the message in each song is represented nice and clearly. One example is, “watch your back because the next man is coming, and if you don’t know that the next man is dumbing". Em… I could find a load of things wrong with that sentence as it doesn’t make sense. It seems that every song has to come right out and say it so you never really have to work out what the song is about. Some of the lyrics are lame but some are quite good, not great though. I think they could have toned it down on the profanity though. Between Angels And Insects has one chorus which consists of “*** your money, *** your possessions, *** your obsessions, I don’t need that ***!" It just seems pretty inappropriate considering that a lot of young people would have bought this album and pick up some new language along the way. Lyrics aside, the music is quite sweet but not technical at all. If you are one of these people that think technicality makes music then you’ll have a hard time listening to this.

It is quite hard to pick my favourite song but my favourite is Between Angels and Insects. It seems that is the only track I’ve described but I’ll get to it in a bit. The song starts off with this cool guitar melody with Coby singing the chorus melodically until it blasts into the song with amps at 11. The lyrics are about when Coby was in L.A, the city of angels. He was staying in a run-down hotel with insects everywhere and he got the idea that in the city of angels, people’s possessions are the most important aspect of their life. The lyrics are described pretty clear and the bass solo is so cool in it. It is a pretty big highlight for the album I think. My favourite would be Broken Home which starts with some delay on the guitar until then again it blasts out into the main song. The lyrics this time deal with when Coby was younger, his parents divorced and he always felt lonely. He felt it was his fault and it ends up as a very sad but angry song. Coby even admits that when he sings this live, there is also a little tear in his eye. This song is a different approach than the other songs. For one, Coby doesn’t rap except a small bit near the end but for most of the song he shouts or sings the lyrics. This was also a single but it never really achieved the success of Last Resort or Between Angels and Insects.

I like all the songs on this album actually and there is two songs that slow the process of the album. Never Enough and Binge are slower, angrier songs. Binge is about Coby’s unhealthy drinking problem and it is basically his wife telling him to grow up and stop being stupid. The songs are mostly melodic but sadly they are some of the worst on the CD. They aren’t bad but painfully average to the whole album’s standard. Honestly, I could harp on about every song here being special and making a humongous track by track out of it but I think it’d be better if I just went to the verdict. If you are a nu-metal fan then you will no doubt enjoy this. Even if you are a person who doesn’t think that technicality over substance then you might enjoy this as well. People both love or hate this but I quite love it and it is one of the greatest nu-metal albums from the new millennium. These album doesn’t really get any recognition because of it being clumped in with other bands around that time and Last Resort being played to death. This is a great album with some minor flaws but it certainly is strong from it’s genre.

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