Coby Dick has something on his mind. "If your father beats up your mother, you should go home tonight and stomp that motherfvvver," he announces fiercely, then pauses a second. "And if your mother beats up your father... well, I'm not going to fuck with that lady."
OK, so it's probably not the Esther Rantzen approved version of family counselling, but like so much about Papa Roach, at least it means well. When the singer informs the audience how they're his family and he loves them, for example, you just know he means well. As the band stick their hearts and nerve endings through the metal wringer just so they can stage a Public Service Announcement about the Fundamental Hopelessness Of Life, they certainly mean well. And yes, it's definitely something of a blessing that Papa Roach, constantly salting the wounds lesser bands wouldn't even admit to, are headed towards the same fame frame as their forthcoming tour mates Limp Bizkit.
They've already sold two million copies of their album 'Infest'. That's two million people listening to their tales of broken homes, troubled suicides and alcoholism. Two million people who might be less inclined to go out and break stuff. Angst might not hit the same zeitgeist buttons as anger, but as Papa Roach prove, it's always in style.
So you'd doubtless give them a few coins if they came round with the collecting tin and some specially printed lapel stickers. Handing over an emotion is another matter altogether. For all Coby's untethered convulsions, the necrotic rage of 'Last Resort' or the sweating zealotry of 'Between Angels And Insects' ("There's no money, there's no possessions" - imagine!), Papa Roach are crunchingly unsubtle. Ideologically, they aim for the target like they're hitting a barn door with a barn door; musically, they sound like some kind of rock homunculus, slowly grown under Fred Durst's bed from various sports metal fluids. The bounce of Bizkit, the rampant angst of Korn, Rage's punk fury, Slipknot's hypersensitivity: it's all been pipetted in there, but efficient biology just equals efficient music.
Coby disappears into an openvarmed audience, but the gravitas and gloom just aren't there. When you're going to lead a crowd in the chant of 'Dead Cell', attack domestic violence, purge yourself of family trauma, you'd better make sure you can carry that weight.
"I love you," says Coby, sharing with us all, and much as you'd like to reciprocate, it's impossible. Yes, they mean well. They just might not mean much more.
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