Amazon.co.uk Review
"What is wrong with the world today?" bellows frontman Coby Dick on
Infest, Papa Roach's opening statement of intent. "The government, the media, or your family?" Welcome to the post-Millennial American rockscape, where every teen has his cross to bear and every band approaches the recording of an album with a whole head of demons to exorcise. And welcome, Papa Roach--not a band that comes to lay waste, more a band that studies the emotionally devastated fall-out once everything's been wasted.
Infest is an album very much in the mould of Limp Bizkit's
Significant Other--muscular, bruising rap-metal, dysfunctional two-fingers-to-the-world attitude--but where Limp Bizkit's anger manifests in Fred Durst's crotch-clutching braggadio, Papa Roach wear their issues with a sense of empathy. The likes of "Revenge" and "Broken Home" ("I know my mother loves me/ But does my father even care?") are pretty self-explanatory, but on "Last Resort"--a brutally simplistic study of a friend's suicide attempt--Papa Roach's brevity is their undeniable strength. Tell the parents--here's a rock band of positive male role-models, ready to bang the world to rights.
--Louis Pattison
CD Description
Papa Roach's major label debut on Dreamworks Records. With songs about everything from divorce ("Broken Home"), to struggles with alcohol ("Binge"), the four-piece, hard rock outfit laces the listener with magnum doses of reality.
Written mostly with its audience's tortured psyches in mind, INFEST aims to let the kids know that they aren't alone in dealing with the pressures and obstacles life can bring, with songs such as the socially conscious "Last Resort", which discusses suicide, alienation and isolation. The production on the album, via Jay Baumgardner, is polished and yet passionate, and singer Coby Dick's vocals are stingingly sharp and energetic. Some of INFEST's other highlights are "Dead Cell", the snappily-titled "Between Angeles and Insects", and "NeverEnough". INFEST is a consistently impressive debut.