Limp Bizkit STILL SUCKS (new album out now)

Here it is (youtube playlist)
Limp Bizkit pops up in conversation frequently around here so i figured i'd let ya'll know the new album's out, a quick listen at only 32 minutes in total, many of the songs are only around 2 minutes long which is interesting.
I consider this to be their "punk" album, quick and dirty without much of the melodic hooks of the past, it started when they put out Dad Vibes which i think sets the tone well as "we're just a bunch of dads trying to be cool", which i think for me lowered my guard and let me enjoy it for what it is more than i would have normally, the rest of the album follows with a mix of the old nu metal style with some nods to modern metal core and some old fashioned Durst rap, some of which i think is actually his best stuff despite how short it is.

I've only listened to it through twice but my favourite song at the moment is Love The Hate, it's just a funny conversation about hating the band with a great groove behind it and directly feeds the theme of the album.

You Bring Out The Worst In Me reminds me of the melodies in the very underrated Results May Vary, then its chorus switches it up for that modern metal core sound i mentioned almost sounding like Bring Me the Horizon.
Don't Change sounds like a Filter song to me, just a simple acoustic piece to tick that box.
Barnacle is what made me think of the punk influence, it's basically a punk song, Pill Popper has some of that vibe too.
Lastly i wanted to mention Snacky Poo, i typically like the aggressive metal LB songs but i absolutely love this rap, it's so 90's and has what i'd call that "Tony Hawk's sound", i can totally see myself creating a skater to this, he even mentions the 90's in the song.

The album ends with "Goodbye" and makes me wonder if they'll make anything after this, it was in production for a long time and while i do enjoy these 32 minutes it is short, but in this age of streaming only the hits what are albums anymore?
This isn't trying to catch you with a hook and keep you listening for that stream revenue, it is actually an album, with a theme and some dumb shit and album art that would look good on a CD case, i think it's pretty cool for that.

What are your thoughts? Am i a blind Limp Bizkit fan? Is it as cool as i think it is?

Found Fred Durst's Giant Bomb account.

The only things that Limp Bizkit had for them was that angry youthful energy and sometimes slick production. This just feels like some over the hill guys messing around, and I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but if they didn't have the name value it would just sound like a thousand other bad bands. Of course it's always hard for groups to put out strong music decades after their artistic peak but some do manage it.

Of course it's not fair to compare Limp Bizkit to A Tribe Called Quest but that's kind of the point. A Tribe Called Quest were incredibly talented artists who, when they want to, can still create great art. It's not like their old art (The new album has nothing with the chaotic youth virtuoso vibe of Scenario, the new stuff is more laid back and thoughtful) but it's still fantastic.

Limp Bizkit did have something back in the day (I actually think their cover of Faith is both interesting and self aware) but they were mostly a time and place band. They packaged a certain 90s vibe with a ton of energy and the right attitude and a lot of people bought it because it reminded them of themselves. That vibe is long gone and the band doesn't have the energy it once did so the things that made them relevant are gone, and they can't adapt and evolve because they just don't have that kind of talent.

The music is fine for what it is and it's okay as a nostalgia hit, I guess. Probably better than if they actually tried to act like they were still 20-something dirtbags screaming "keep on rolling." But it's also the definition of unnecessary.

If they had fun and their hardcore fans have fun getting a little new music before the lights go off for good, good on 'em. It was cool to dislike Limp Bizkit and their fans back in the day but in 2021 we have much bigger fish to fry than bad white rappers who get way more attention than their much more talented black peers.

When it comes to Limp Bizkit, I've always said that their weakest link was their own front man, Fred Durst. The other members of the band are actually pretty talented and could've made it playing any other type of rock music. With that said, I mostly agree with Bigsocrates. Dedicated fans of Limp Bizkit will be satisfied, and their hates will keep hating.

This is a travesty! There’s only one band that can say they suck and thats Primus.

Despite a relatively strong start with a few heavier party tracks it quickly devolves into some boring rap centric songs and some truly dreadful ballads. It never finds it's way back to what they do best, giving Wes Borland the spotlight. Not that their best is particularly good.

It's 32 minutes long and still has time for some of the most boring skits you've ever heard.

I believe Spotify pays the artist for number of songs streamed (not counting less than 30 second tracks) so financially artists want to make short songs so that the listener can get to the next track as soon as possible. But that makes it obvious that the album is a low-effort cash grab and it's disappointing to see such lack of ambition. And there seems to be an unwritten rule that as once you've got 30+ minutes of runtime you can call it an album instead of an EP. But again, disappointing lack of ambition.

I probably won't listen to this Limp Bizkit record but Ghostface Killah's 2019 album was the same, every song was 2-3 minutes and the album runtime was 33 minutes (that was with skits so there was maybe 29 minutes of music) and it was really jarring because there were some good beats on it but all the songs were over before they had really even started and the album never gained any momentum and in the end you are just surprised that it was over and generally just underwhelmed about everything you just heard. And it's just a really worrying trend overall.

I remember liking their first album a lot, it was wierd and didn't sound like anything I had heard before at the time.(I didn't listen to any rock until I was like 14 or 15).

TBH, They sound like they have fun making music and don't take themselves to seriously, I respect that. They get a lot of hate but critics gonna critique and doers gonna do.

That Dad vibe song is catchy tbh, could see a lot of goofy content made online around something like that.

The only thing relevant to me about this album is that they took 2 minutes to do a skit where they name drop Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Holy Fuck, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Haxon Cloak, Ween and Aphex Twin. I don't think a worse band has ever name dropped a better set of other bands on their own album ever and that's pretty hilarious.

They have always been terrible. They were bad then, even worse now.

Yup. I've actually talked about this topic with a few professional musicians, and it's very divisive among them. It's becoming a really big thing in music to do this and tons of musicians who have been successful in the last few years almost exclusively write like this. Every song they write is between two minutes and 2:30 (almost always under three minutes with few exceptions) while also having a hook of some type within like 5-10 seconds of starting (since not having a hook very early tends to cause someone to skip when they're going through a playlist). Some labels are starting to make it be an expectation that artists write music like this since it maximizes both their chance of going viral and their chance of making more money from streaming. Obviously, not every artist likes this or wants to write like this so some are pushing back since it boxes them in on how they write music.

I probably could list off dozens of artists who write like this. bbno$, Oliver Tree, and Joji all immediately come to mind but there's tons of others. There's basically an entire subgenre of hip hop that's all written this way and is seemingly written with the intent of getting popular on TikTok. It's starting to show up in mainstream music too, especially in hip hop and with all of those new pop punk-inspired bands and artists (see Willow Smith's new album, or that Beach Bunny album).

It's not a turn up album like Chocolate Starfish, but I appreciate the self-awareness.

I can't be only person who enjoyed it?!

I grew up listening to this band. Loved them then, love them even more now. I stopped listening to them some time after high school, maybe because I thought I was too "cool" for them or something, and because I was starting to listen to a lot of heavier and different stuff. I circled back around to them years later and had a new found appreciation for them. Their music is a lot more tongue-in-cheek and self-aware than I think people give them credit for (and Still Sucks is them coming right out and saying it). The riffs and grooves are undeniably killer, and Wes Borland is an incredibly inventive player with one of the best guitar tones I've still ever heard. John Otto and Sam Rivers together make a very tight and energetic rhythm section and can groove like few else can. And for as much shit as Fred Durst gets, as he is obviously the weakest link in the band, it wouldn't really be Limp Bizkit without him. His lyrics are rarely deep, sometimes legitimately awful, but often ridiculous enough to be funny. Most importantly, they're just a fucking fun band.

I've been looking forward to another LB album for ages. Still Sucks ain't it though. It's not "bad" per se, as I actually enjoy a lot of the tracks for what they are. However, as the first thing they've put out in a decade, it's incredibly underwhelming. It's 32 minutes of what feels like totally random, half-baked ideas. Almost none of it is heavy or resembles what LB have done best in the past. The first two tracks are fun, with decent riffs and signature LB sound, but after that it loses any sort of focus. I wouldn't even really call this a nu-metal record because very little of it is guitar-focused.

I would be surprised if any of these songs were intended to be on the fabled Stampede of the Disco Elephants. With all the talk of Fred Durst being in the studio constantly over the years, there's no way THIS is all they came up with. Most of the songs sound like filler tracks that would be between bigger songs on a bigger album. Wes Borland even said in an interview relatively recently that they had about 35 songs done. I'm hoping they release something more substantial and that they don't take more than a couple years to do it. I mean, it's cool that they're back and doing shit again, but this album simply isn't enough. Ideally I would like to finally get The Unquestionable Truth Part 2. Part 1 is secretly probably the best shit they've put out.

Though I mostly agree with Anthony Fantano's/TheNeedleDrop's review, I do take issue with his interpretation of "Dad Vibes".

The crew gives the album its dues on this weeks Bombcast, sorry Bakalar :P.

@flameboy84: i enjoyed it! I was surprised, i'm pretty sure i couldn't stand any limp bizkit before this, but i found this one to be genuinely fun to listen to. Corny across the board and the ballads are probably straight up bad, but i thought the band knew exactly who they were, what their sound is and how to implement it in decent tracks in this day and age, especially as more newer bands seem to be influenced by the nü metal scene these days (i think of like bring me the horizon, poppy, a lot of that hyperpop scene, some of that trap metal scene popping up, the band tetrach is practically a nü metal revival band, etc.)

They named it well

I don't quite understand the earnest "this album is actually not that bad" opinions about this album. Maybe it's because when Limp Bizkit was on top of the world, I was in a jazz and classical phase of being a musician, so I largely missed them being popular and I also missed the backlash for the most part. I just wasn't paying attention. I guess maybe I just have no context to compare this album to. But I listened to it because enough people seemed unironically surprised that the music here is kinda good, that I had to listen to it just to know. And it's...not good? It's also not the worst thing I've ever heard. Maybe that's the most biting critique of all, that it's neither bad enough or good enough to bother remembering for me.

@youeightit: The context is that we haven't had new Limp Bizkit in a long time and during that time we've seen nu metal die or change into other new things, fans of nu metal in the 00's who moved away from it are starting to remember it fondly, even non fans like Gerstmann enjoy having the old bands like Korn and Slipknot around just to see what they're up to.

So while there's a bit of a positive attitude this album comes along and is totally fine, a bit weird but not aggressively awful which people unfairly expect from Limp Bizkit, i think because people want to point a finger at the bad thing about something and for many it's easy just to point at LB but they were never that bad. So people like Ben Pack are coming along now expecting the worst from this, finding a few things to like about it and saying "Yeah, this is alright".
That's my take anyway.

@cikame: that's actually a really thoughtful and helpful explanation, thank you. This probably says more about me than anything else, but I think I'm just now fully understanding that, once upon a time people took this band seriously enough to have strong feelings about. Like obviously I have heard of LB even though they were never in my orbit, but I always just assumed with a name like that that they were just a joke band making silly joke music. But what your explanation taught me is that in fact, people not only took this band seriously, but seriously enough to harbor legitimate feelings for them, either positive or negative. I mean I sorta get it, in the early 90s I took They Might Be Giants extremely seriously.

Strangely, I also didn't realize Limp Bizkit was considered Nu Metal. I'm familiar enough with Korn and Slipknot to understand the description, but LB doesn't sound anything like those groups to me. What is the connecting thread? Is it Rage Against The Machine? Is rap rock and nu metal the same thing?

Haha, Durst was too late in making his jump to conservative folk metal like that chubby dude in Staind. He still tried anyways with Empty Hole. That song is his retirement strategy.

@youeightit:You're tempting me to turn this thread into my nu metal soapbox, if the mods have a problem with that let me know, to everyone else i apologise :P.
Disclaimer these are my opinions i'm not a historian

"Nu metal" isn't very descriptive and that's kind of intentional/useful, it's not like "heavy metal" where you can expect metal... but more heavy, it's a bit more broad.
Because of how huge RATM and Limp Bizkit were people got used to using nu metal to describe heavy metal mixed with rap or "rap rock", but the way i describe it is "heavy metal with something different or creative about it", bear with me...

Slipknot doesn't adhere to the common building blocks of heavy metal, i'm thinking Metallica or Iron Maiden (but it's not a genre i'm into so someone will have to school me on that), if we look at Wait And Bleed they're mixing clean vocals with screaming and a little rap/chanting, record scratching from old school hip hop, we're downtuning guitars heading towards 7 strings, it's really heavy but there's lots of ideas and creativity so they fit my description of nu metal.
I imagine if Slipknot and Limp Bizkit started now we'd come up with two different genres for them, but because nu metal is pretty broad and back then it was new they both share the genre, they both appeal to similar fans of heavy music that's different, especially misfit young fans of the time who wanted their own musical identity.

Lastly back to my point about it being metal but different i'd like to use Skindred as an example, i love doing this, Skindred is a heavy metal reggae hip hop punk band and they fit my nu metal critera perfectly, since their influences are a bit more upbeat they don't quite fit the dark and unhappy moods of other nu metal, they're a bit more like Limp Bizkit in that way, but it's purely the creativity of it that does it for me, heavy but groovy, loud with quiet parts, screaming and singing, the more creative it is the better.

I tried not to go on tangents but i could talk about nu metal for hours.

@cikame: that’s an excellent explanation, again, thanks!

This conversation has had me thinking about nu metal and curious why I never brushed up against it. Like really thinking about it. And I’ve come up with three things that influenced my taste in music at the time: Working on my own music, drugs, and girls. As I said, I was listening to stuff pretty far away from nu metal at the time. Doing lots of drugs put me in contact with electronic music, and some pretty far out music as it went on. And the girls I dated were into things like Radiohead and industrial music. I was really into hip hop at the time, but though some of that may have driven past the neighborhood of nu metal, none of it stopped long enough to visit.

@youeightit: I don't know hip hop but i'm curious what your thoughts are for a band like Nine Inch Nails? They're industrial and inspired a lot of music in the 90's/00's including nu metal, maybe there's some connective tissue there.

Yep. I was completely uninterested in nu-metal/rap metal when it was new, and turns out my opinion hasn't changed.

Bakalar is right. Listen to the new Mastodon album instead.

@frytup: I wanted to like Mastodon since i'm a massive Tool fan and i'm always looking for more prog rock, but i ended up only liking the song Steambreather.

@cikame: I don't love Nine Inch Nails, but I do appreciate the thought and the craft that goes into that music, and other sinilar artists that I like, like Pigface and Throbbing Gristle, things like that. And traditional heavy metal is what made me start playing music, so the aggression and the power and even in some cases the negativity in some heavier music is in my wheelhouse. I do just wonder if the nu metal movement zigged in the world at a time when my life was zagging. Like maybe if I had been a few years younger maybe it would have caught me right between the eyes. Trying to figure this stuff out now that I'm an old man with no nostalgia for this kind of music might be lost on me, but I love the discussion this weird topic is inspiring.

@frytup Mastodon, on the other hand, is in my wheelhouse, with the prog elements and the math rock stuff they do. But unfortunately, unlike Limp Bizkit, who I genuinely know very little about, this one unfortunately boils down to the fact that I just don't like Mastodon very much. I've tried, but for some reason they don't do much for me.

@thebipsnbeeps: thanks for the suggestions. Nu metal is something I was way into as a teen but not followed as much since!

One of the most underrated bands of all time.

As someone who was never against Limp Bizkit, I find this sudden interest in them kind of funny. Granted, I only have and listened to one album by them "Chocolate Starfish", which I thought was pretty good back then and still do today. And I liked many of their music videos which also covered some of their past albums back in the day. I haven't heard their latest album, but I'm sure I would tolerate it if nothing else. But this whole thing kind of reminds me of how Dragon Ball Z evolved over the years in popularity. There was a time in the 2000s where a lot of Americans hated Dragon Ball Z, mainly because of the whole anti-Anime thing that was going on, similar to the anti-Nu-Metal thing as well. And like Nu-Metal, while the whole anti-Anime thing in America is still strong, Dragon Ball Z suddenly got a pass and became hugely popular. I have some ideas why, which aren't positive, kind of like how Norse mythology got popular again, but I won't go there. I just find the whole thing hilarious, and more pretentious than Fred Durst ever was.