Papa Roach has staying power

Musical trends seem to change with as much frequency as the daily headlines.

That is precisely why it's hard to think of teenagers and twentysomethings as anything other than fickle when it comes to bands that rely on MTV and modern rock radio as means of reaching an audience.

It's a notion that makes the numbers associated with Papa Roach all the more surprising.

Since debuting in 2000, the band has released four albums: "Infest," "Lovehatetragedy," "Getting Away with Murder" and last year's "The Paramour Sessions." The band has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide. More important, it has scored seven Top 10 hits, including "Forever," which is the second single from "Paramour."

"A cockroach can survive anything," lead singer Jacoby Shaddix said of Papa Roach's viable longevity.

"Forever's" climb up the charts — it's currently No. 2 on Billboard's modern rock chart and is poised to cross over onto the Top 40 chart — will no doubt be bolstered by the fact that Shaddix is hosting the MTV series "Scarred."

After having been approached by the network a few times with projects he didn't feel comfortable with, Shaddix signed on for "Scarred" in large part because the high energy captured his personality.

"The biggest thing is that it's an opportunity for me to get my face in front of a younger crowd," said Shaddix, who also made a point of saying if he wasn't going to have fun doing the show, there was no point being involved.

Although "The Paramour Sessions," named for the mansion in which it was recorded, is the band's fourth album to have debuted in the Top 20 on the Billboard album chart, that is where the comparisons stop.

Lyrically and musically, the album is still built upon angst, but the open chords allow the riffs to sound even bigger than past material.

Fashioning themselves somewhere between metal and punk, the band's maturity as songwriters has made the "singalong" melodies seem like less of a risk then they really are.

In any case, "Paramour" is still no less a Papa Roach album than the others, but with risk comes evolution.

"It's kept our band relevant," Shaddix said, "and we've been blessed to connect with people on a mass level."

Shaddix also noted that band is using the Internet, namely paparoach.com and myspace.com/paparoach, to reach new fans and keep in touch with the group's growing fan base. The band regularly posts updates from the road and communicates directly with the kids who buy the records and pay for concert tickets.

And speaking of the road, Papa Roach is getting exposure by touring with various bands and playing festivals and radio shows with as many different bands as possible. At Rock in Rio in 2001, the band played to more the 250,000 fans opening for Guns N' Roses.

The goal for this year is to position the group to headline an arena tour, but Shaddix says the band is not quite there yet.

"The next best thing is to get on stage every night and just kill it," Shaddix said.

The group is expected to do just that during its show Wednesday night at The Plex in North Charleston.

It's remarkable to think that the four of them — Jerry Horton, Tobin Esperance, Dave Buckner and Shaddix — didn't kill one another during what they termed a "tumultuous and turbulent" recording process, in which they moved into the Paramour Mansion.

All four of them dealt with not one, but two divorces — of Esperance and Buckner — while Horton, on the other hand, was preparing for fatherhood

"And then there's me," Shaddix said. "I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I was just going crazy."

The situation, as a whole, brought new life to the songwriting process, and the end result was another record that "sounds massive" while going a long way toward maintaining the "authentic" Papa Roach sound throughout the 13-track effort.

It proves yet again that the band can survive anything.

Keith Ryan Cartwright is a Nashville, Tenn.-based entertainment journalist.