Welcome by Taproot

Welcome, the second album from Ann Arbor, Michigan's Taproot, hit the racks on Atlantic on October 15, 2002, and it's the record where the band stopped sounding like one more face in the nu-metal crowd. Toby Wright produced it at Cherokee Studios, and he gives Stephen Richards room to do what he does best: slide from a wounded croon into a throat-shredding bellow without warning. Mike DeWolf's guitar and Richards' own stack into a thick, grinding wall, with Phil Lipscomb's bass and Jarrod Montague's drums hammering away underneath.

"Poem" was the lead single and the one that broke them wide; "Mine" came next, with a video directed by System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian. A third single, "Art", was announced and then scrapped by Atlantic, which left fans grumbling that the label was sitting on the band. It still stands as Taproot's most successful record, and they took it on the road on the second leg of Disturbed's Music as a Weapon Tour.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.