Papa Roach
Lovehatetragedy (2002)
CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES THIS IS MY LAST RESORT what do you mean Papa Roach had more than one song? Oh, okay then.
Let's get something clear, ladies and gentlemen : nu-metal is bullshit. I am far from a card-carrying metalhead, but it seems that if everyone can look back at your flash-in-the-pan musical genre and agree that it was bullshit, they're probably right. Papa Roach are just one of a myriad of bands whose time was a five or six year period from 1998 to 2003. A time when expressing your teen angst through highly structured rap metal was THE COOL THING TO DO. They hit it big with a song at the turn of the century (the aforementioned Last Resort) and then......
.........
.........
Well, would you believe they are still going? Still recording and touring, and doing quite well out of it. Unlike a number of their peers, however, they have shown a commitment to evolving and growing as musicians (or so their Wikipedia page claims).
Today I am reviewing their third (!) studio album, Lovehatetragedy, because my wife asked me to and I'm not going to say no to my wife for obvious reasons. I promised I'd be fair.
Maybe.
The Album
To avoid saying this during every song write-up, I am going to point out a few things about the music in general, because I repeated myself quite a number of times in my listening notes. After that, I'll go through the tracks individually.
THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT PAPA ROACH'S LOVEHATETRAGEDY
- Every track is standard nu-metal fare. Big riffs, muddy production (with a couple of exceptions), mid-song bridges, tempo changes and screaming. THERE IS TOO MUCH SCREAMING.
- The lyrics are wall to wall WOE IS ME angst and suffering
- It is listenable, unlike most of its contemporaries. Not mindblowingly brilliant, but not shitfully craptacular. For me this is because all of the songs on the album sound energetic, like the band gives a shit and wants you to know it, and there are enough different ideas to keep things interesting, but there are no WOW moments anywhere.
Righto. The album starts with M-80 (Explosive Energy Movement) which is a good, up-tempo album opener. It's not bad. Life Is A Bullet contains some quality drum work during the verses (the drumming on this album is pretty good, actually) but it's the first example of the Roach's tendency to go for "by the numbers" song arrangements. Time and Time Again is angsty and sharp, although again is very "by the numbers" with the oh-so-predictable tempo change and breakdown section that I hadn't heard since oh probably THE LAST SONG.
Walking Thru Barbed Wire got off to a bad start because of the unnecessary abbreviation of 'through'. Clearly DreamWorks Records were charging by the letter for cover printing. IT'S THREE LETTERS BOYS. Pissed me off. Anyway the song is nothing special, though it does contain the quite baffling lyric, "Be as gentle as spring winds". That's a sweet sentiment and a nice line but in the middle of a nu-metal song it doesn't really work. After that we get Decompression Period, which is the first song that I really dug; a very cool and different introductory riff gives way to a decent enough tune. It's also the only time where the screaming lyrical delivery actually belongs, as the song builds nicely to a crescendo.
Born With Nothing, Die With Everything has a great message and a good set of lyrics. It's about working hard to earn your success and is the least angsty song. Unfortunately it's another unremarkable song that was ruined with rapscreaming. STOP IT. She Loves Me Not is the next song. It was a single, and at the start you can tell; it's not muddy like everything else, has a hooky riff and sounds like everything that was popular in alternative rock at the time. But then....
RAPPING. And not GOOD RAPPING, just that typical nu-metal SPEAKREALLYFASTANDLOUD rapping. NO NO NO NO NO.
NO.
Following that is the album's heaviest song, Singular Indestructible Droid, which I really enjoyed. Loved the heavy riff and the unexpected pre-chorus chord progression. Yeah the chorus screaming pissed me off (again) but beyond that I thought this was a cool song. Black Clouds is okay but nothing special, more angst and riffage. Code of Energy, apart from having a crap title, wasn't too bad either for the first ninety seconds. A frenetic opening that's maintained for a bit, but after the Stereotypical Mid-Song Breakdown it all just meanders to a boring, boring end. Lovehatetragedy is the closer, and it's the only song that sounds remotely different (and it isn't really, but there were moments that were not replicated anywhere else on the album, particularly in the way the band used quieter sections in the song to bring everything down). I thought it was a pretty good song, decent (if again oh so ANGSTY) lyrics and the chorus was really, really catchy. A nice way to finish.
The Verdict
Lovehatetragedy is an album of stock standard heavy early 2000s rock music. What it does, it does okay. For a nu metal album it's alright, certainly much better than I was expecting. I found it relatively enjoyable to listen to even if at no stage did it really grab me in any way, shape or form.
However, while listening to it I came to a realisation as to why albums like this are basically forgotten nowadays, even by those who listened to them incessantly upon their release. So much of the album is tied up in angst, and the reason many people connected with albums like this is because they too shared that angst at that time. Unfortunately, ten years later, songs about youth angst no longer apply to you. The reasons for your angst are long gone, replaced by stresses over the mortgage and the kids and what am I going to cook for dinner tonight? There is no longer a personal connection to the themes and lyrics. Once you strip away the personal connection, only the music remains, and the music is either solidly unremarkable (as Lovehatetragedy is) or complete fucking elephant shit (such as, oh, the entire Limp Bizkit catalogue).
I cannot in good conscience say that this album is crap because it isn't. It's better than that. But it's also not good. It's a limbo album, and listening to it makes me glad that during the early 2000s I was too busy listening to Radiohead and Led Zeppelin to notice nu-metal.
And to my wife I'd like to say....thanks. I get why you loved it when you were younger, you love(d) this genre, and this album is good for the genre. It's not your fault the genre has no relevance anymore and is/was generally cack. ;o)
My rating: ** and a half
Standout Tracks
Lovehatetragedy
Singular Indestructible Droid
Decompression Period
Tomorrow....heh. I'm not going to spoil it. It could well be my most painful review yet. That's all I'm going to say. See you then :o)
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