Papa Roach released 'The Paramour Sessions' 20 years ago today, on September 12, 2006. The 13 song Geffen Records release became the band’s fifth studio album and followed 2004’s 'Getting Away with Murder.'
The record took its name from the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles, where the musicians lived and worked for several months. Drummer Dave Buckner told Modern Drummer that he experienced “quite a few metaphysical, paranormal experiences” inside the historic property. The unusual surroundings became part of the story surrounding the sessions before the album even arrived.
The band had long wanted to make a record while living together inside a mansion. In a 2006 interview with TagWorld that was archived by Blabbermouth, bassist Tobin Esperance said some of the group’s jam sessions lasted six or seven hours. With nobody else watching or listening, the musicians had room to experiment and build songs together without leaving the property.
Jacoby Shaddix described the material in deeply personal terms before its release. Speaking with Launch Radio Networks, he called it “the most personal band record that we’ve ever written.” As Blabbermouth reported, Shaddix said the songs dealt with love, hate, frustration, anger and difficult personal issues the band members were confronting at the time.
Howard Benson produced the album, with Papa Roach serving as coproducers and Chris Lord Alge handling the mix. The original sequence contains 13 tracks, according to AllMusic, beginning with “…To Be Loved” and closing with “Roses on My Grave.” Other tracks include “Forever,” “Time Is Running Out,” “Reckless” and “The Fire.”
“…To Be Loved” served as the album’s first single and introduced the record before its September release. “Forever” followed and became another major song from the album cycle, while the full record gave the band space to move between aggressive tracks and more restrained material.
'The Paramour Sessions' entered the Billboard 200 at No. 16. A later Blabbermouth report placed its opening week at nearly 37,000 copies in the United States.
The album also marked the final Papa Roach studio appearance by original drummer Dave Buckner, who left the group in 2007. His work on 'The Paramour Sessions' closed the recording run of the lineup heard throughout the band’s breakthrough years.
