Papa Roach, opening act: Kryn
Monday, 4 August 2025
Opatija / Ljetna pozornica / Croatia
The Papa Roach ‘Infestation’ of 2025 has clearly zeroed in on Europe. Daddy Roach came back around our corner of the world just over five months after his last tour (review here).
This time we caught the infestation in Croatian Opatija, which once again brought that special open-air charm and made the whole show feel somehow even more intimate.
The crowd was first warmed up by the “locals” from Rijeka known as KRYN, who genuinely surprised as an opening act — a rare treat. Most of the time, both audiences and press are happiest when there’s no support band (when you’re hovering around forty, mainly because you’ve run out of Voltaren gel for your calves and knees, and in younger years it was pure impatience for the headliner), but KRYN delivered a full-on energy bomb. They’re a five-piece metal band, as mentioned from Rijeka, who build their sound on heavy riffs, dark melodies, and a powerful vocal threaded with controlled aggression. Their unique sound and high-energy performances have quickly made them a recognizable name on the European metal scene.
Their debut album Scars Remind Me earned them a loyal following and strong reviews, and in December 2024 they dropped their new record Risset on SPV / Install Records. It’s an album that hits hard — punchy guitar phrases, massive hooky melodies, and lyrics that get under your skin in an instant. Aggressive, but loaded with emotion and passion.
The vocalist had the crowd in the palm of his hand for the entire set. He never let them breathe, and they stayed alert and locked in throughout! Some fellow journalist colleagues (there were only two others besides Rockline) remarked afterwards that at first it looked like this local Croatian band might actually upstage the headliner with a performance like that.
Kryn – setlist:
1. Risset
2. Reminder
3. Waters
4. The Nerve
5. Rewind
At exactly 9:30 PM, things got real. Papa Roach stride onto the stage with a confident grin, knowing full well that no exterminator in the world can lay a finger on them. They’re in their element immediately, and the show is genuinely spectacular. Lighting as polished as some big-name American pop star’s production, and almost more fire than at a Rammstein show. The sea air clearly does frontman Jacoby Shaddix a world of good on the energy front. He wasn’t exactly standing still back in Vienna either, but in Opatija he was bouncing around like a ball in a professional ping-pong tournament.
This time they opened with their more recent track Even If It Kills Me, which served as yet more proof that Papa Roach — despite their seriously long history — can still win new listeners while convincing the old guard to embrace new material, which is no easy task most of the time.
The first three songs flew by like a shot, and then, as the band got even closer to the crowd, the more serious MC conversations started to kick in. As we already noted in our previous report, Papa Roach have been vocal since the very beginning about what was back then (in the distant year of 1993) a taboo subject — mental health. It’s no secret either that Chester Bennington (Linkin Park) and Jacoby were close friends in real life. Jacoby said in a recent interview that he hasn’t come to terms with Chester’s death and never will. That’s why Papa Roach once again, this time in Croatia, donated a portion of the proceeds from ticket and merch sales to a local organization supporting people struggling with mental health.
Of course, there was no going past Falling Apart without a dedication to the late legend Ozzy Osbourne. Jacoby sang the chorus of Black Sabbath’s Changes a cappella — no instrumental backing — as a salute to the departed Prince of Darkness. Again in Croatia, the heavier themes didn’t go without some remarks. Some found them funny, others found them out of place. From the crowd, a few people started yelling something to the effect of “I don’t give a f***” during the “going through changes” chorus. Not entirely unlike what our Igor found annoying at the DragonForce show in Zagreb, when the crowd started shouting “Play, you c***s”.
Even during the moment of silence for everyone we’ve lost this year, the Croatian crowd didn’t entirely grasp the gesture and kept chatting and yelling (to be fair, the vast majority did go quiet, but when 2,000 people fall silent in one place, even a handful of conversations ring out very loudly). Then came the song that tackles those mental struggles, titled Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark). As you might gather from the title, the Opatija summer venue lit up with LED phone flashlights, with the moon and the sound of the nearby sea adding to the moment — and it clearly created a deeply emotional atmosphere, with more than a few people (mostly among the ladies) ending up in tears.
We carry on with another well-known track, Scars, followed by the newcomer — BRAINDEAD, which had only been played live a handful of times before Opatija. The crowd absolutely loved it, mostly because it packs so many familiar riffs and the raw energy that’s specific to the early Papa Roach albums, making even the older fans feel right at home.
Jacoby was genuinely as playful throughout the show as a little kid getting their first Lego set. During HELP, even though he’d had the crowd locked in the whole time, while walking along the barrier separating the front rows from the stage, he decided to stretch his legs — and just kept going, making his way across the entire venue while singing the track. Along the way, handshakes, hugs, high-fives, and fist bumps brought a lot of people right back to their “core” childhood memories. It was genuinely touching to watch how people took in the presence of the vocalist they’d grown up hearing only through MTV, now standing just a few centimetres away. Jacoby — who could easily steal the “short king” title from the legendary Deryck Whibley — often disappeared into the crowd entirely, and fans could locate him much like a shark in the nearby sea: by the hairdo sticking up above the heads as he made his way through.
After the fifteenth song, Born for Greatness, the band quickly take their bow and leave the stage — but everyone knew it wasn’t over, since Papa Roach still hadn’t played Last Resort. This time, no “play, you c***s” — just a simple “we want more” — and the band is back on stage in under a minute. Two legendary tracks followed: Between Angels and Insects and Infest, between which Jacoby asks the crowd how many of them were born before 1993, when the band was already up and running. Surprisingly, judging by the show of hands, the audience looked once again pretty diverse. You’d expect a mostly millennial crowd, but in a gathering of just over two thousand, it looked like just under half were millennials, with everyone else being younger.
Next up was the track we could simply call “mixed grill” — a mashup we’d already witnessed in Vienna, pulling from famous songs by the likes of Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit, and System of a Down.
And here we are. The end. The only ones having a bigger party than the concertgoers are the mosquitoes. After a couple of seconds of silence on stage, everyone knew what was coming — and then the famous line drops: “Cut my life into pieces.” The crowd loses it, roaring and screaming along to every word. The massive grins on every band member’s face over the crowd’s reaction at that opening line kick the whole thing into Honda VTEC territory right at the redline — all the way to the end. Beer in the air like an Alestorm gig, and the screaming was comparable only to someone who just won the lottery. The bond between Papa Roach and their crowd is something genuinely special. A band that never quite had the household-name status of Blink-182 or Linkin Park in Europe at the peak of nu-metal and punk rock in the early 2000s clearly chose quality over quantity when it came to their listeners — the kind who treat Papa Roach like their religion and are grateful for every single show.
Papa Roach’s debut concert in Croatia was one of the most memorable we’ve had the privilege of sharing with an audience. Promises of a return were handed out like condoms at an orgy, but actually making good on those promises will have to wait until the next tour. Because if this was the ‘Last Resort’ — we want it one more time.
By: Helena Medved & Denis Paradiž
Photos: Denis Paradiž
Setlist:
1. Even If It Kills Me
2. Blood Brothers
3. Dead Cell
4. …To Be Loved
5. Kill the Noise
6. Getting Away With Murder
7. California Love (2Pac cover)
8. Liar
9. Forever
10. Falling Apart
11. Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark)
12. Scars
13. BRAINDEAD
14. Help
15. Born for Greatness
—encore—
16. Between Angels and Insects
17. Infest
18. Blind / My Own Summer (Shove It) / Break Stuff / Chop Suey (medley)
19. Last Resort
