Papa Roach

Aren’t Papa Roaches supposed to survive damn near anything the world can throw at them, up to and including all-out nuclear war? When these vociferous nü-metallurgists crawled out from beneath their Northern California rock in 2000 with their major-label debut, Infest, it looked as though that scene had produced its first serious adherent to the tradition Rage Against the Machine had established: noisy, emotional, committed to an ideology and in possession of a pretty clunky band name. They even had a guitar player who could make weird sounds with his instrument just like Tom Morello! So how come last June’s lovehatetragedy–in all ways a noisier, more emotional, more committed effort than Infest, and one in possession of some killer scraps from At the Drive-In’s junk pile–disappeared almost immediately after it appeared? Must be the money: Greasy-haired, New York-based garage-rockers without goatees flirted nonstop last year with mainstream culture’s New York-based gatekeepers, and mainstream culture flirted back–an obstacle only a nuclear-war-sized promo budget can overcome. But the music’s there, waiting to be experienced; see the Roach on Saturday night and they might even convince you they’ll outlast whoever tries to squash them next.