Jacoby Shaddix has screamed into microphones for over 30 years. Lately, some of what he's been saying sounds a lot like testimony.
The Papa Roach frontman sat down with Bunnie XO - host of the Dumb Blonde podcast and wife of Jelly Roll - for a wide-ranging conversation that covered his childhood, addiction, marriage, fatherhood, and the two things he spent most of his life trying to avoid.
"I'll tell you this: the two things I never wanted to be in my life was sober and a Christian," Shaddix said. "And here I am now - a follower and a sober guy."
He wasn't joking, but he wasn't ashamed either.
A Rocky Road to Faith
Shaddix described his faith journey the way a man describes a fight he nearly lost. It started in recovery. He was going to meetings, working the steps, and kept running into the same suggestion: find God, or at least a God of your understanding.
"It was a journey for me for years," he said. "A lot of failure, a lot of questioning. Turning my will over to God, following - and then taking it all back, then living my way, and then repeatedly finding myself in that deep dark hole."
The turning point wasn't dramatic in the way rock documentaries usually are. It was quiet. A foxhole prayer at the end of his rope.
"When I finally put the bottle down, it was like: God, do you hear me? Can you hear me? I need a miraculous change. I need something beyond what I can do - because I kept trying to control the change in my life. And the walls fell."
What came next wasn't an immediate conversion. It was watching someone else live it first.
"I had a fella I was real close with that walked my faith journey out with me," Shaddix said. "I was very skeptical. These church people are weird. And then when I saw this faith walk alive in front of me - somebody talking the talk and walking the walk - I saw the transformation. It became alive to me. I was less fearful of, 'All right, I'll try to believe.' And then it became like: I'm a full-blown believer."
Breaking the Chain
For Shaddix, faith isn't abstract. It's personal, specific, and rooted in a lineage he refuses to repeat.
"The Shaddix family, where I'm from - my people come from a long line of alcoholics, cheaters, broken people, murderers. That type of lineage. And I'm like: that's not who I am. That's not why I'm here. That's not me. I'm here trying to break that chain."
He spoke openly about what he called "bondage" - the feeling of being enslaved to drinking and pills that escalated over the course of Papa Roach's rise - and the freedom that came when he stopped trying to manage it alone.
"The more I purge these things and turn it over and just walk in the light," he said, "I feel like it's the way. It's the path. Because I've tried the other way. And it wasn't it."
Why He Kept It Quiet - Until Now
One of the more honest moments in the conversation came when Shaddix admitted why he didn't talk about his faith publicly for years.
"I didn't want to share it with people because I felt that it wasn't edgy and it wasn't rock and roll," he said. "And I'm like - I'm not here to prove that I'm edgy and rock and roll. I done lived it. And I saw where it was taking me."
Hearing Jelly Roll speak openly about Jesus on stage, he said, gave him permission to do the same.
"When Jelly's talking about God on stage, I love that. That inspires me. It makes me go: okay, I can get up here and talk about this. The more I open up about it, the more I realize - in this rock and roll world - there are more believers than I realized."
Right Now
Shaddix is currently sober, in a Bible study with a close friend, and building what he describes as a daily toolkit: breath work, prayer, morning pages, gratitude, and exercise along the American River trails near his Sacramento home.
Papa Roach's new single "Wake Up Calling" - which he described on the podcast as a song about "standing on the edge of disaster, being pulled back from the brink, and ultimately choosing love over self-destruction" - has already hit No. 1 on the rock charts and is the third single from their upcoming 12th studio album. A full-band music video has since been released.
The band is also in the middle of the Rise of the Roach world tour, with UK and European dates running through November 2026.
For a frontman who once made a career out of raw honesty, this might be his most honest era yet.
Watch the Full Intervieew Here: Jacoby Shaddix | Dumb Blonde Podcast
