Papa Roach made it to one million fans on the Rise of the Roach tour last year. Then they came back and made something even more personal.
The official music video for "Wake Up Calling" is out now via New Noize Records/ADA. Directed by Hannah Gray Hall, the clip is the visual companion to the band's January single — a track that frontman Jacoby Shaddix says is "one of the most raw, emotional songs we've written." The video is now doing the work of proving that claim.
The Song, the Production, and What It's About
"Wake Up Calling" debuted at a surprise performance at Nashville's Whiskey Jam on Broadway two months before its official release — a room full of artists and industry people who got something unannounced. That framing tells you something: this wasn't positioned as a commercial radio play. It was introduced as a song in a room where songs are evaluated on their own terms.
The track was produced by Colin Brittain, whose recent credits include Linkin Park, All Time Low, and A Day to Remember. Brittain has a track record of producing rock records that are emotionally direct without being over-polished, and "Wake Up Calling" fits that pattern. It follows in the footsteps of "Scars" and "Leave A Light On (Talk Away The Dark)" in tone — melodic, vulnerable, still carrying the weight Papa Roach has always put into its harder material.
"'Wake Up Calling' is a song about standing on the edge of disaster — being pulled back from the brink, and ultimately choosing love over self-destruction," Shaddix said. The themes of connection and self-reckoning that he describes aren't new territory for Papa Roach, but the delivery here is stripped down. Less armor, more exposure.
Papa Roach's 2025 in Context
The "Rise of the Roach" tour performing to over one million fans is not a small thing. For a band that spent years being reflexively dismissed as a relic of the early 2000s nu-metal wave, sustaining that kind of live draw in 2025 says something real about their current audience.
The band also hit Wembley Arena on a sold-out U.K. run and donated £20,000 to Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) — continuing their long-running commitment to mental health advocacy that goes back to "Last Resort." That's not a charity angle bolted onto a press release. It's a consistent part of who this band has been for 25 years.
With "Even If It Kills Me" reaching No. 1 at U.S. Rock Radio in 2025 — their 13th chart-topper — Papa Roach's late-career run is legitimate by any metric that actually measures it. Two-time Grammy nominees. Platinum sellers. Still releasing music that lands.
The Video
Hall's direction takes the emotional core of the song seriously. The "Wake Up Calling" video is not a performance clip. It's a visual narrative that matches the lyrical weight of the track — appropriate for a song about the moment before you choose to pull back from the edge. It holds up as a standalone piece.
The single continues building toward whatever Papa Roach is working on next. No album announcement has been made, but the consistent release cadence — "Braindead" with Toby Morse, "Even If It Kills Me," the reimagined version, and now "Wake Up Calling" — suggests a record in some form of development.
Watch the video above. If you've been sleeping on this era of Papa Roach, this is a reasonable entry point.
The Bigger Picture
What Papa Roach has built since Ego Trip (2022) is not a nostalgia machine. Shaddix has spoken consistently about the band being in one of its most creatively free periods — not chasing a specific commercial format, not trying to recreate "Last Resort," but making music that reflects where four guys in their forties actually are. "Wake Up Calling" and its predecessor singles are the evidence.
The lyric video dropped in late January alongside the single's release. The fact that the full music video is arriving in mid-March — roughly two months later — suggests deliberate pacing rather than a rushed rollout. Hall's visual interpretation adds a layer the lyric clip couldn't provide, and the timing gives the track a second moment of attention after its initial release window.
Whether these singles eventually coalesce into an album announcement remains to be seen. Papa Roach hasn't confirmed a formal project beyond the individual releases, but the consistent production through Colin Brittain and the thematic coherence across the recent singles points in that direction. When the announcement comes, "Wake Up Calling" will be the emotional anchor of whatever context they build around it.
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