Limp Bizkit: Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water

(Flip/Interscope)

Herald rating: * *

Review: Russell Baillie

Some bands do tend to bring out the old fart in one.

Limp Bizkit - Big Day Out 2001 headliners, No 1 in the New Zealand album charts and possibly the biggest band in the world this week - is just one of those groups.

They're derivative, tedious, obvious, studiously obnoxious, unchallenging and unfunny in the way Beavis and Butthead were after the novelty wore off.

Of course, the novelty of big loud guitars with rude rap vocals by white guys in backwards baseball caps isn't going to wear off for at least a few more BDOs.

And when we say "they" we probably actually mean perma-capped I'm-angry-I-am frontman Fred Durst, whom many probably see as the nu-metal answer to Eminem.

Hardly. The songs of this gruesomely titled effort are mostly bludgeoning grinds supporting Durst's I'm-in-your-face-I-am lyrics - or someone else's, in the case of Hot Dog, which tosses in a curious Nine Inch Nails parody.

Otherwise, we get the Mission:Impossible 2 theme Take a Look Around; Hold On, a song co-written with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots which sounds like STP; a hip-hop guest list which extends to various Wu-Tang Clansmen, among others, on the lumpen Getcha Groove On; an insta-moshpit anthem in single My Generation and a ballad of sorts, The One, on which the I'm-not-cut-out-for-relationships-I-am Durst rues the loss of a girlfriend.

Yes, it's undoubtedly all to do with the inarticulate rage of the Napster generation or something. Which made it all the more tempting to toss this into the trick-or-treat bags last Tuesday. Sure woulda stopped those damn kids coming round next year.