“You motherfuckers came to get down, huh?!”
Jacoby Shaddox is beaming – and you can hardly blame him. The perennially posi, perma-quiffed frontman looks bowled over by the scenes in front of him, over 12,000 deliriously happy fans losing their baps as Papa Roach smash through a medley of some of the biggest hits of the nu metal era.
Korn classic Blind – generally recognised as nu metal’s ground zero – is swiftly followed by Deftones’ My Own Summer (Shove It), Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff, System Of A Down’s Chop Suey! and, finally, Papa Roach’s own Last Resort. It’s a warm, shamefully nostalgic scene and a classy tip of the hat to a moment in time where heavy music was a genuine pop culture phenomenon.
25 years on from Last Resort first propelling Papa Roach to mainstream rock prominence, and the band are finally headlining London’s historic Wembley Arena for the first time. It’s an impressive feat – few could have envisioned a mob of scrappy, angsty moshers led by a guy calling himself Coby Dick (“Mr Dick if you’re nasty”) not only lasting the distance, but staying relevant and central to the alternative rock scene for a full quarter-century. It’s well-earned, mind – where many of their peers faded into obscurity or simply burned out, Papa Roach moved with the times, smoothly swerving away from nu metal and dipping their toes in everything from emo to radio rock to EDM-powered pop metal along the way.
It’s a tactic that tonight’s support clearly have ambitions for. Across a decade and a half, WAGE WAR’s sound has evolved from solid if hardly trailblazing metalcore to the kind of hyper-polished, pop-leaning modern metal that Bad Omens have made their calling card. The Floridians do a serviceable enough job of warming Wembley up, but it’d have taken something special for anyone to hang with tonight’s headliners.
Emerging from behind a huge, white, roach-adorned curtain and backed by glistening LCD screens and bursts of pyro, PAPA ROACH kick into new track Even If It Kills Me with a gusto that would put most arena-trotting veterans to shame. Two ragers from breakthrough album Infest follow, both Blood Brothers and Dead Cell sounding as urgent and full-throttle today as they did in 2000, before catchy-as-crabs 2006 banger …To Be Loved sees Shaddix throwing himself into the front row.
The rest of the main set leans into just about every era of Papa Roach’s career so far, and Shaddix remains a true master of ceremonies throughout. One minute he’s Corey Taylor-ing everyone to get down on the floor (Liar), the next he has Wembley Arena lit up with cell phone lights (Leave A Light On). A sweet anecdote about Chester Bennington following Forever and some earnest monologues about mental health bring some extra emotional heft, but the majority of tonight is dedicated to celebration, and it hits fever pitch for the encore.
Returning to the stage with the iconic opening notes of Between Angels And Insects ringing out, the the four-piece lean all the way into the occasion by dropping two more, voraciously received Infest numbers (sneaking some bonus Eminem bars into Broken Home), before jumping into that all-star nu metal medley.
“You made our fucking dreams come true!” says a visibly emotional Shaddix after a raucous Last Resort brings the evening to a close. Maybe, but this is a richly deserved moment for him and his three bandmates. Over 25 years in and there are few bands that could have so effortlessly handled Wembley as this.
Papa Roach setlist: OVO Arena Wembley, London – February 7, 2025
Even If It Kills Me
Blood Brothers
Dead Cell
…To Be Loved
Kill the Noise
Getting Away With Murder
California Love (Tupac cover)
Swerve
Liar
Forever
Falling Apart
PSA
Leave A Light On (Talk Away The Dark)
Roses On My Grave
No Apologies
Scars
Help
Born For Greatness
Encore:
Between Angels And Insects
Infest
Broken Home
Nu metal medley
Last Resort
