Papa Roach - Nottingham Rock City

On Wednesday 7^th 2009, Papa Roach arrived in Nottingham to perform in front of a large crowd at the legendary venue, Nottingham Rock City. The doors opened at 18:30, and everyone queued up either getting their tickets or generally trying to get in. By the time I got inside Rock City, the first support band was playing already.

It was a band I have never heard of before, UK “newcomers”, Heaven’s Basement. It appeared that not only had I not heard of these guys, but the majority of the crowd hadn’t either. They did sound quite amazing actually, and surprisingly I really enjoyed them. They have a CD out, so at some point I’m going to have to go and hunt a copy of that down.

The second support band that played were the well known popular band called Madina Lake. I was not overly excited about seeing these guys, but I have to give credit to them, not every band gets to play alongside the likes of Papa Roach. I only know one song from Madina Lake, “here I stand” and thankfully they played it!

At approximately 21:00 the one and only Papa Roach started to play. At this stage the crowd went wild, and there was even a very small bottle moshing session going on, although only lasting a couple of minutes. The first song played by the Roach was “Days of War”, an impressive opener both gig and album wise, followed immediately by “Change or Die”. The third song played is one of my personal favourites, “Lifeline” closely followed by “She Loves Me Not”. Shaddix was on form, his usual energetic self, tirelessly going from one end of the stage to the other to whip up the audience into a frenzy. The sound was tight, as you’d expect, from Papa Roach.The rest of the set list was a mixture of old Roach, complete with the recently absent rapping, and new Roach songs from the Metamorphosis album.

Set list was as follows:“Days of War”, “Change or Die”, “Lifeline”, “She Loves Me Not”, “Dead Cell”, “World Around You”, “Had Enough”, “To Be Loved”, “Murder”, “March out the Darkness”, “Scars”, “State of Emergency”, “Coffin Nail”, “Blood Brothers”, “Forever”. They ended the show with “Hollywood Whore” and “Between Angels and Insects” before disappearing off stage. And of course, a couple of minutes later, they re-appeared for an encore singing three more hits. “T.I.R.O” “Into the Light” and “Last Resort”. Finally the night was over for me, so it was time to head back home with a tremendous headache, and a bit of exhaustion. If ever Papa Roach return to Nottingham, I will be happy to return just to see them again.