New Limp Bizkit

I'm not here to promote anything. I'm just here to talk about the new Limp Bizkit and well....Limp Bizkit in general. Because it's hard for someone like me to ignore them. So now that I've wiped the dust off my old copy of Significant Other and put it in the player for the first time in about five years, I can have have something that will hopefully trigger some old memories. This new Limp Bizkit single really inspired me to write this ramble or whatever you want to call it because it really helped me realize and understand this band better and now I know my true opinion on them. So now that I can talk about them without mindlessly bashing them, I'm going to write this instead of writing album reviews on one or more of their records.

Before I go into talking about the above video, I'm going to give you a brief history of my personal relationship with this band.

I was born in 1994, so I was a teenager when nu metal was still really big. So, like A LOT of people my age at the time, I loved that shit. Even though it was the classic metal my dad showed me that got me into metal as well as about two or three death metal-ish bands, I was very into nu metal. It was never my favorite genre, but I listened to A LOT of it from 6th grade up until my junior year of high school. I was all about bands like Saliva, Slipknot, Godsmack (my first nu metal band), Mudvayne, old Primer 55, Disturbed, Korn, Sevendust, the first two Linkin Park albums (read my review on Meteora HERE), Deftones, Drowning Pool, Otep, System of a Down, Papa Roach, and a few others that I can't think of at the moment. One of those included Limp Bizkit. And to be honest, I was never super crazy about them like my best friend was. Yes, I did listen to them and I fell in love with maybe four or five of their songs, but I never got excited every time I heard their name.

But after a few years, my music taste went in different directions. So even though I didn't think of the genre any less, I almost completely stopped listening to it by the time I was a senior in high school. It was also by this time that I really had a lot of sour feelings towards Bizkit. I came to senses with myself and admitted that Fred Durst's voice was very annoying, the attitude of the members was appalling to me, and 90% of their music grew extremely irritating for me after a few tracks. But there was, is, and always will be two things about them that I've never stopped thinking: their bassist is fucking amazing, and Counterfeit is one of the best nu metal songs ever produced. Yes, even Fred's whiny-sounding voice was outshined by the heavy energy and groove of Counterfeit.

Other than that song, I'm still disgusted by everything else they've released. Not because I believe it's utter shit, but because I've since discovered other music that when you compare the two, Limp Bizkit is complete bull crap compared to it. Every album that Bizkit put out was worse than the previous one. The last catchy song being Rollin' from the Chocolate Starfish album. But after that, they weren't even bad, they were just boring! They had totally lost it in my eyes.

Recently, I was talking to someone on an online metal forum. And we ended up talking about bands that we like, but no one else likes (referred to as "guilty pleasures"), and of course, I mentioned a lot of screamo and metalcore bands that I love (i.e. Underoath, Asking Alexandria, The Word Alive, blessthefall, Attack Attack!, Alesana, Killswitch Engage, Atreyu, etc.). And the band that he said was his guilty pleasure was Limp Bizkit. This was the first time that I've even THOUGHT that name in years. He said that this was a band that he has always loved and has always appreciated. So because I'm not a total asshole and I don't judge people like that, I decided to give him my opinion on them and shared how I used to really like them too. And the next thing that he did was send me a YouTube link, saying "this is what they are now". The video he sent me was the above song.

Now before you go and bash it upon seeing the phrase "feat. Lil Wayne" in the title. Just forget about him for now. I'll get to that in a bit. Let's just focus on the Bizkit part for the time being. The first thing that this song has helped me realize about literally all of Limp Bizkit's material is how much fucking energy they have in their music. It may not all be GOOD and likable music, but goddamn does it have energy. Now I have something else that I can appreciate about these guys, regardless of the mass amounts of shitty albums they've pulled out of their asses.

Second, the thing about these guys that bothered me the most is now gone. Fred Durst's godawful whiny voice. One look at him in the video and you can tell that he has aged. Yet looking at all of the live clips, you can still see the same energy in all the members that they had back in the late 1990s. That right there is something to at least give a thumbs-up to. Because there are a lot of bands that lose their energy after about 10 years or so of playing. Because he has aged, his voice doesn't sound all high-pitched and whiny, it still sounds exactly the same, except it sounds more midranged and...well...mature! It's much more tolerable and it's even enjoyable now.

The third, and the most significant thing about this song/video that, even after listening to it countless times for over a week, I can't fucking get over. Remember that I said that (to me) the times that Bizkit wrote a song with VERY catchy music was rare? The only truly catchy and powerful songs that they've written (to me) are Counterfeit, Rollin', My Generation, 9 Teen 90 Nine, and Clunk. Everything else they've written is either mediocre or just outright disgusts me. But this new track, this is the best fucking thing I've ever heard from them besides Counterfeit and My Generation! Yes, it still sounds like Limp Bizkit, and it definitely still has the same nu metal attitude that they've always had, but it isn't bad!! The drum pattern at the beginning is perfect. It's very heavy and creates a great base that has a lot of flexibility for anything to be built onto it without sounding bad.

Ok, time to bring up the guest vocalist on this thing. Yes, the infamous (to some) rapper Lil Wayne. If you didn't know, Bizkit and Wayne are pretty tight; they're good friends. Even to the point to where Limp Bizkit signed on to Lil Wayne's label, Cash Money Records, about a year ago or so (I can't remember exactly when). Does his voice ruin the song? I wouldn't say so. And that's probably mostly due to his voice NOT being 80% auto-tuned. That's right, we get to hear the stripped-down voice of Lil Wayne, which is actually still pretty fucking irritating haha. But here's the thing, he doesn't ruin the song. He actually kind of fits the song. Although they definitely could have done without having him as a guest, he gives the song diversity and some different faces/moods. So all in all, I let the fact that it's Lil Wayne slide because he's not in Limp Bizkit, he's only in one minute of the song, and he's in the background for about half of that minute. So what does it matter? Guest appearances aren't supposed to be outstanding and, well, most of the time, they aren't that impressive. Because the goal is not to make the guest artist look better than the band, so it's okay cause his appearance only makes Bizkit look that much better!

Of course, the video is pretty much your typical nu metal music video. A compilation of live clips, the band playing the song in random places (in this case, in someone's driveway), and tons of shots of the band fooling around backstage and other random places. So because that's something very common in the whole genre and means nothing about the band, I'm not judging the video at all. And the clip of the couple screwing around with the hose and the leaf blower is fucking hilarious to me. A lot of people will see that as retarded, but I've always understood the cheesy comedy aspect that Limp Bizkit has had their entire careers.

So although I'm currently addicted to this song, it's not making me look forward to their next full length because I don't even like these guys in the first place. This is all I need, and I'm glad that they decided to release this as a music video because I will continue to go back to it on occasion in the future. But most of all, this song has really helped me come to my senses and realize my true opinion on these guys and help me understand them better. But I don't like their music any more than I did three months ago. This is just another song that I would add to the "Limp Bizkit's only good songs" list.