PAPA ROACH Singer On CHESTER BENNINGTON: 'I've Struggled With A Lot Of The Same Demons He's Struggled With'

Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station recently conducted an interview with PAPA ROACH frontman Jacoby Shaddix. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

Speaking about the recent suicide of LINKIN PARK singer Chester Bennington, Jacoby said: “I knew him quite well. I went out to dinner with him about a month before all that went down. He just had great advice to give me and was just super friendly and I just thought everything was cool. But the reality is I’ve struggled with a lot of the same demons he’s struggled with, and I understand the darkness.

“For anybody out there that’s walking through that themselves or has somebody in their lives that are in that dark place, my heart goes out to ’em, ’cause it’s not easy,” he continued. “And sometimes it just feels like everything is just way too heavy and you just can’t handle life. And it’s tough sometimes. I’m just glad I’m still breathing, ’cause that really just hit me hard. It made me go, ‘Ugh. That’s just too heavy.’ We lost some good ones in this last year, for real.”

Asked if sobriety and his family are what got him through the dark times, Jacoby said: “It’s definitely an anchor for me — 100 percent. First off, my sobriety is very important to me. That’s what really kind of roots me in sanity. Because the insanity, I can get lost in it. And it could be the drugs… whatever. And my family definitely — my wife and my kids — the idea of losing them or not being part of their lives is terrifying to me. So they’re definitely something to fight for, and I love ’em dearly. And so every day I’m grateful for my relationship with my wife, I’m grateful for my positive relationship with my kids. And so I wanna keep that — those relationships. ‘Cause at the end of the day in life, that’s all we’ve got — all our relationships and our experiences with other people. And I value those.”

PAPA ROACH will hit the road again next spring in support of its critically acclaimed ninth studio effort, “Crooked Teeth”. The tour kicks off on April 5 in Raleigh, North Carolina and runs through May 13, wrapping up in Corpus Christi, Texas. The tour will be hitting 25 cities, featuring special guests and 2018 Grammy Award nominee NOTHING MORE, with support from ESCAPE THE FATE.

“Crooked Teeth” was released last May. The latest single from the disc is called “Born For Greatness”.

PAPA ROACH recently confirmed that it has already been in the studio writing and recording material for its next LP.

Interview (audio):