| Product: |
Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water - Limp Bizkit |
| Date: |
20/02/01 (34 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Enough melodic tracks to balance out against...
Disadvantages: the excessive swearing!
Limp Bizkit - Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavored Water.
The Music
---------------
Compared to previous albums, 'Chocolate Starfish...? is a mixture of both 'Significant Other' and 'Three Dollar Bill Y'all$' with a little bit of something new! Generally, it contains the original aggression and ruggedness of the first album, and certain songs resemble the melodic tracks from the second album.
- Intro & Outro
These are exactly what you'd expect of Limp Bizkit showing off! Similar to the Intro for Significant Other' they are high-tech, futuristic, sci-fi like intros and outros.
- Hot Dog
This track has a good beat to it and nice guitar work from Wes Borland. The most interesting, and obvious statement for this song is that it's OK to swear every other word! Put it this way, it's not exactly the type of song that you'll here an edited version of on the radio! The chorus is "borrowed" from the Nine Inch Nails. Apparently, Fred approached NIN front man Trent Reznor at the last minute to see if it was OK. Their rivalry has grown since! One listening tip for this track, ensure you don't have it too loud at the beginning of the song, Durst's high-pitched signing voice shouting "Ladies and Gentlemen, Introducing the Chocolate Starfish and The Hot Dog Flavored Water...Bring it On!" before any of the music starts isn't exactly kind to your ear-drums!!
- My Generation
This is the second single to be released from the album. This too has more than enough language for an entire album...well you'd think! Loud drumbeats and a nice 20-30 second slot for DJ Lethal to show what he is made of, really make up for the excessive swearing. The song writing is slacking a bit for Durst, but what else would you expect from someone who watches 'Fight Club' 28 times!! A nice climax in the middle of the song, which is exactly what m
ade Limp Bizkit's 'Break Stuff' as famous as it did. All in all, a very bouncy song!
- Full Nelson
One of my favourite songs from the album, the introduction is less than what you'd expect of Limp Bizkit. "Why's everybody always picking on me?? Besides that, more excessive amounts of language and the drum is STILL louder than the guitar, something tells me that this album focuses on the talent of John Otto more than Wes Borland, as in previous albums.
- My Way
This is a very melodic song, similar to that of "Re-Arranged" from the 'Significant Other' album. Not a great-deal of swearing (Hallelujah!!). This is a possible fourth single from the band. What lets down the song as a whole and the "melody" is the repetitive "Check, check, check out the melody" in the background. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that make it a little more obvious that the band is trying to include a couple of melodic songs on the album?
- Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)
There are two versions of the song on the album, firstly is the more famous Air Raid Vehicle (the third single from this album) reaching number one and refusing to leave the top 10 by the time I wrote this. It was also with the help of this single that allowed the Album to visit the top-spot. Additional publicity of the song was fairly obvious using it as the World Wrestling Federation's Undertaker's theme music. Beginning to get annoying and repetitive.
- Livin' It Up
If anyone can recall the MTV Video Music Awards from 2000, they will remember Christina Aguilera's performance being (intentionally) interrupted by Fred Durst who sung a portion of this song. He calmly walked out of the audience with the microphone, climbed the steps jammed, dropped the microphone and returned to his seat. This song is definitely worth a bit of airtime on the VMA's! This song apparently sta
rs Ben Stiller, but I can't quite pick it out! In this song he states he has seen the 'Fight Club' 28 times and also invites Christina Aguilera to "Come Get some". This is a generally heavy song with moderate swearing.
-The One
This is another melodic song from the Jacksonville five. For once the guitar is louder than the drums!! However, it isn't used a great deal. The bass can be heard quite well, which too is about.
-Getcha Groove On
Starring XZibit, this song is truly amazing. This is like a fast "N 2 Gether Now" with good background. Swearing is very high. Songwriting is fantastic (for once!) for both Fred and 'X to the Zee'. Drums are once again very loud, but you don't mind for this kind of song. Not very Nu-metal like, more hip-hop/rap, and let's face it, what's a Limp Bizkit album without one of these!
-Take a Look Around
The first single from the album, and in my opinion the best! Including the incredibly catchy theme tune from the original Mission Impossible series jazzed up by Borland. This song can also be found on the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack album. Songwriting is very good. When Fred Durst gave the tape of this song to Tom Cruise to ask if it was okay for the M:I 2 theme song, he only had one complaint, and that was if he could remove the word 'hate'. Limp Bizkit tried, but agreed with Cruise that it's best left in for what it means. I agree that the song wouldn't be the same with anything else in there. All the new fans of Limp Bizkit (not me) would have started to like them from this song. Extremely heavy and aggressive, and what makes it better is that everyone can recognise the tune!!
-It'll Be OK
The third melodic song from the album, and a very good one it is too. I think what makes Limp Bizkit albums so different (well, this counts for 'Chocolate Starfish...' and 'Significant Other&
#39;) is they have such a huge variety of music, at least one Hip-Hop track, several melodic and the remainder aggressive. For some strange reason this song reminds me too much of the entire Significant Other Album. Gets heavy at the chorus and swearing is moderate.
-Boiler
It's getting to the point where most fans would skip back to the beginning to listen to 'Hot Dog' or 'My Generation' but they really shouldn't! This song starts off very slow with quite poor songwriting. There is no story behind the song and no intention for it to be released. Therefore all I can say is this song is reasonably melodic, and gets heavier towards the chorus, but has no real point or intention.
-Hold On
This song also starts off melodic and has quite a harmonious feel to it. Instead of rapping or shouting, Fred has turned to an Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers) style of singing. This song is very good, but very different; therefore most fans will just skip onto the next song. The song doesn't get heavy at any point.
-Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)
If you listen to the album as a whole, you'll fell calm and harmonious after Hold On, but this is suddenly interrupted with Durst's "Play that ****ing track". Oh well, it had to end sometime. The last track on the album is very weird if you got extremely tired of listening to Rollin' Air Raid Vehicle. This is a hip-hop version starring Method Man, Redman and DMX. This is a better song than Air Raid Vehicle, but would never become as popular. Nowhere near as heavy as the original and contains a lot more swearing, as you'd expect.
Singles
----------
Singles released off this album in the UK so far are:
> Take a Look Around
> My Generation
> Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)
The next single will either be 'My Way' or 'Getcha Groove On' (Starring XZibit). It is most likely going to be
'My Way' because a video has already been done for it.
The Artwork
------------------
The album cover is very different to the first two albums, which feature a guy dressed in baggy clothing and a hooded top. The cover shows the band's cartoons as babies playing in hot dogs with a starfish in their hands, not as good in my opinion.
Guest Appearances
--------------------------
There are several guest appearances in this album, and they are as follows:
> Ben Stiller ('Livin' it Up')
> XZibit ('Getcha Groove On')
> Method Man ('Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)')
> Redman ('Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)')
> DMX ('Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)')
Bonus CD
---------------
The bonus CD on limited editions of the album is an obvious promotion for Limp Bizkit's first album 'Three Dollar Bill Yall$'.
-Crushed
This is a B-Side as far as I know. This is very melodic containing moderate swearing. Not heavy whatsoever, with background singers!! I don't like this track.
-Faith
This is where the 'Three Dollar...' promotion begins. Faith is from the first album and is a cover of George Michael's very popular 'Faith'. Like the rest of the first album, this song is rugged and aggressive and very, very, very heavy. I like the song a lot more because of this cover, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch the original on MTV!!
-Counterfeit (Lethal Dose Mix)
The second installment of blatant promotion! This song is probably the best song on the first album, the most aggressive, heavy, rugged song Limp Bizkit have done in my opinion. This song contains one hell of a climax in it, which should definitely be listened to when it really is one of those days!! Loud bass, which is good :-)!!
-The videos
Tracks 4, 5, 6 and 7 are all the CD Rom music vid
eos from songs gone by. Track 4 is the video of Faith (quite boring, but shows Korn so I am happy), track 5 is Nookie (this is a reasonably OK video), track 6 is Re-arranged (I like this video, but I am told the end is corny - I don't agree!) and finally track 7 is N2Gether Now which is a humorous video and stars Method Man.
Conclusion
----------------
In conclusion, this is a very good album. Having bought it from the day of it's release, I got tired of it quickly, however listening to it this weekend I found it necessary to write an opinion on it to tell everyone out there that it is worth buying. 'Significant Other' (the second album) remains my favourite, and it is still probably the best. I find 'Chocolate Starfish...' better than 'Three dollar...' in some areas and vice versa in others. These two albums are too different to compare. I wouldn't pay 2 or 3 quid extra for the bonus disc; you may as well get 'Chocolate.' (Normal version) and then buy 'Three...' as well!! It has come to a point where Limp Bizkit are extremely popular in this country, and I personally hope it ends fairly soon, because it is getting ever harder to buy tickets for concerts and stuff!! Back to the album, It is definitely worth having in your collection it wouldn't do any harm to get all three with any extra money you have lying around!! One last comment, the album was originally going to be named 'Limpdependence Day' which would have been much better, but while they're hot, there's always this year!!
Summary:
|
|
Deutschland 
España 
Italia 
France - 
