They have the military precision of a boy band just back from boot camp. Dressed all in black, pogoing in sync, Papa Roach are a slick nu-metal dream of a band. Everything is present and correct: massive rabble-rousing choruses, big riffs and even bigger Marshall stacks, an incredibly artful way of translating adolescent angst into the least stressed stadium rock you'll ever hear.
Oh, and a complete clown as a frontman. You expect Papa Roach to operate at a certain exalted level of intensity and tooled efficiency. And when they play the excellent 'Between Angels And Insects' and its many slightly less impressive cousins, it's easy to see how they've rapidly become the biggest and most potent of the newest generation of metal bands.
You expect the singer, Coby Dick, to say things, with that sort of grandstanding introversion unique to the genre, like, "I just want you to know, rock'n'roll keeps me alive." And he does.
What's less obvious - and rather more entertaining - is the galumphing comedy inadvertently generated by Dick. A plump, over-enthusiastic puppy where you might've anticipated a dark lord of misery or threatening fratboy, Dick lives up to his name superbly. You can tell how hapless he is when, during a perfunctory call and response session with the crowd of "OI! OI! OI! F**K! F**K! F**K! SH*T! SH*T! SH*T!", he's hit by the shoe of an adoring fan.
Better is to come. Dick's grasp of politics means he'll initiate a sustained rant against George W Bush not because of the president's rejection of the Kyoto agreement, not because of the spy plane fiasco or the enormous tax cuts for the super-rich, but because he wasn't allowed into the White House wearing jeans. "No disrespecting the ladies, no grabbing at their titties," he advises crowdsurfers but, five minutes later, he's telling the women to "Shake what your momma gave you."
The comedy reaches a climax during an ill-advised reggae interlude when Dick compels the crowd to throw joints onstage and smokes one for that authentic Jamaican 'vibe'. Suitably disoriented, he gets the crowd to wave their lighters aloft, "taking it back to 1985, like Bon Jovi and shit."
It's all brilliantly dumb. He picks up a pre-teen stagediver and throws him back into the moshpit and, eventually, at the end of the humungous 'Last Resort', dives in himself. Then, with endearing naivety, Papa Roach blast Outkast's 'Bombs Over Baghdad' through the PA at full volume, rendering their own biggest hit relatively inconsequential. A ruthless, groomed nu-metal machine conquering everything before them? Perhaps, but not without the odd farce along the way.
