Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
- Limp Bizkit
- Band Name: Limp Bizkit
- Record Label: Interscope
- Release Date: Oct 17, 2000
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It was only natural to suspect that Limp Bizkit would fall on their faces this time by getting serious. But Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water is looser and livelier and just plain better than anything they've ever tried before.
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70The sound is now clearer than on either predecessor; the rapping likewise. And here come Jane's Addiction and the Smashing Pumpkins--this is a slicker, grander record than Significant Other. [Jan 2001, p.112]
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60Fred Durst may grab the headlines, but Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water really shows that all the power Limp Bizkit are known for comes from their bandmembers who, you know, actually play instruments. Durst's lyrics are wack when he raps and bad high school poetry when he sings.... Of course, there aren't many people looking for deep thoughts from Durst and Co. -- just lots of big, dumb, angry fun. And on that count, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water delivers.
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60You'd expect better from a band so on top of their game.
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Well, if nothing else, the search for the year's dumbest album title is over. And in some respects, the search for the year's dumbest album, too. True, Limp Bizkit's third release is filled with thrashworthy hooks, hardcore beats, and plenty of blind rage, but frontman Fred Durst is so inarticulate about exactly what is pissing him off that it's tough to take him seriously.
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As tiresome as Durst can be, Limp Bizkit are very good at what they do; the band is exceptionally tight, evidenced by its ability to switch time signatures and moods within songs (kudos to guitarist Wes Borland). Still, their stance and sound already reek of formula, and the album's attempts at mold breaking may be the band's way of acknowledging this fact.
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If the band supported his sheets of noise, terrifying guitars, monstrous rhythms, or even a hook every now and then, Durst's narcissism may have been palatable, but the group pretty much churns out the same colorless heavy plod for each song.
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Durst offers his piggish take-it-or-leave-it stance on relationships ("It's my way or the highway," he gleefully whines on "My Way"), his fantasies of the hip-hop high life ("Livin' It Up"), and his delight with obscenity ("If I say fuck two more times that's 46 fucks in this fucked-up rhyme"). Limp Bizkit's music is just as predictable, complete with scratches, guitar squalls, and mosh-pit crescendos.
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30They have a saying around recording studios: you can't polish a turd. Well, thanks to producer Terry Date, Starfish just might be one of the shiniest pieces of pooh in the world of waste.
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30There's little in the way of cohesion or artistic forethought here, and some of the tracks are just bad, though nothing is as surpassingly awful as lead single "Rollin'," its shout-outs overly reminiscent of "Bawitdaba."
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20The very concept of Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water might be brilliant if it was a work of absurdist art. But this album is just absurd.
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On the whole, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water feels like an interminable groan, a harried hustle toward obsolescence. Rather than creating a cathartic requiem for, say, the impending dotcom depression, this turgid non-effort doesn't even live up to the mookish reputation refuted with such salacious fervor on "Take a Look Around."
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 30 out of 51
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Mixed: 1 out of 51
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Negative: 20 out of 51
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dales.9
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Amazing sound, limp bizkits best album. Why the critics dont like it is a total mystery. ive come to the conclusion they're either jealous or deaf.
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10