6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Broadmoor World Arena, 3185 Venetucci Blvd., $39.75-$45; 576-2626, ticketswest.com.

Music is the only world Tobin Esperance has ever known.

The Papa Roach bass player met the band he still plays with when he was only 13.

“I was the little kid everybody talked about who could rip it up on the bass,” he says from a tour stop in Missoula, Mont.

Rock band Papa Roach and heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch will perform Tuesday at Broadmoor World Arena.

Papa Roach let the teenager fill in on a couple of shows, much to his delight. And when he didn’t play gigs with them, he made sure to hang around.

When the band finally got serious about moving to Los Angeles, they booted their original bassist, who kept missing shows, and told the 16-year-old Esperance he was one of them now.

He knew the band was onto something special when MTV started inviting them to perform at the Video Music Awards and “Total Request Live.”

“To get a record deal, I thought ‘cool,'” he says. “I thought it meant we’d tour in a van for years playing clubs. We weren’t thinking about hit singles or playing arenas. We were just four dorky kids.”

Their first major label triple platinum release, “Infest,” dropped in 2000. “F.E.A.R.,” their ninth album, came out earlier this year.

“Between the airy synth breakdowns copped from old Linkin Park LPs on songs like ‘Face Everything and Rise’ and ‘Never Have to Say Goodbye’ to woe-is-me lyrics like ‘all that’s left is the emptiness inside of me,’ on ‘Broken as Me,’ the band thoroughly revels in its arrested development,” wrote critic Kory Grow about the new album on Rollingstone.com.

Esperance credits the band’s longevity with their ability to stick out.

“I would like to think it’s a certain chemistry and charisma we have as a band and the way we perform,” he says. “People can see through the BS and see four people who are passionate and real about the music they make. Our songs connect with people on a real life level.”

JENNIFER MULSON, THE GAZETTE, 636-0270, JEN.MULSON@GAZETTE.COM