The Connection is the seventh studio album by California rock band Papa Roach. It was released on October 2, 2012 through Eleven Seven Music. The album was produced by Sixx:A.M. vocalist James Michael, who co-produced the band's previous full-length album Metamorphosis, and Goldfinger vocalist John Feldmann. The first single, "Still Swingin'", was released on July 24, 2012. A non-album track titled "Even If I Could" appeared on The Avengers Soundtrack. A lyric video to the song "Before I Die" was released on Papa Roach's YouTube channel on November 15, 2012. On November 19, 2012, The Connection was released as a vinyl record, making it the first Papa Roach album to be released in that format. A lot of the tracks from the album have electronic influences. Some tracks on the album feature a return to the rapping vocals of the band's early releases.

Jacoby Shaddix has described the album as a "rediscovery of the basic elements of Papa Roach." He states: "We kind of went back and looked at the history of our band and really thought about… Creatively, what evolutions have we gone through? When we came in, it was, like, metal and hip-hop and nu-metal, and then we kind of got more into straight-ahead rock and then we added pop elements to our band. So this record just encompasses everything we’ve done from the beginning to where we are currently as a band; it just kind of connects the dots of all the elements of our sound over the years." "There's some hip-hop, more keyboards than before, sound loops, textures - it's dynamic, diverse and vulnerable. That is Papa Roach. We have never sounded better", said Shaddix.

Regarding the album's title, Shaddix stated it was one of many different titles the band went through. "We always just kept coming back to ‘The Connection.’" stated Shaddix. "What ‘The Connection’ means to us, it’s our connection to the music, it’s the connection of this music to the fans, it’s the connection that we make onstage with our music, it’s the connection from fan-to-fan on the social Internet marketing media world."

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