Time For Annihilation: On The Record & On The Road

There’s a sense of duality about Papa Roach’s first live album. Of course, as its title suggests, it captures the nu metal legends both in the studio and on stage. At the same time, it also represented a convergence of the past and present as they stood at a fork in the road.

By the time of the album’s release in 2010, the band had firmly established themselves as future-proof, arena-worthy behemoths of metal. They’d outlasted the nu metal gold rush and were thriving in their own right, but something was about to shift. Six albums deep, and at the dawn of a new decade, they were severing their ties with the major label world and releasing music on an independent label for the first time.

In that sense, ‘Time For Annihilation…’ represented a celebration of Papa Roach’s story so far on their own terms. Alongside five songs introducing new facets to their sound, from the country rock-tinged ‘No Matter What’ to the swaggering ‘Kick In The Teeth’, they preserved the fiery energy of their live show on a physical format, with the recordings captured across five shows from their 2009 co-headline tour with Shinedown. At the time, it was described by Kerrang! as “a bold, best foot forward tribute to where they’ve come from, what they are capable of and, perhaps most importantly, where they’re going next”.

Fifteen years later, the power of those songs, both on record and on the road, shines through all the same. Now they get a new lease of life in the form of a reissue, marking the record’s first ever pressing to vinyl.