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| Song titles may be less dangerous than they appear. |
Rock has been around long enough now that there's a genre for almost anyone: there's surf rock for the surfers, art rock for people who want to experiment with their music, punk rock for people who are pissed off at the system, and stoner rock for people who, you know, do drugs. Limp Bizkit, on the other hand, seem to be catering to a different crowd: douchebags. I never knew we needed an entire genre of music made by and for complete douches, but apparently Limp Bizkit did. They're officially the first douche rock band in America.
We
may as well begin...
If
you were wondering why something felt “off” about this song, it's
because there's only two notes in this entire song. There's two notes
in the verses, and the same two played in reverse for the chorus. And
it isn't like some bands where they still try to put little flairs
into two-note grooves, like the bass line for “No One Knows” by
Queens of the Stone Age. Honestly, “Break Stuff” has some of the
flattest, most unimaginative instrumentation the band could have
mustered. The end result is that this whole song, especially the
“moshpit” section, just drones on and on forever. It just drags
on to remind me that I intentionally listened to this song on loop
for your entertainment needs. If it weren't for the moshpit section,
you'd almost never have known the song re-looped.
It's
also interesting that their main musical inspiration, Rage Against
the Machine, still managed to have interesting instrumentation
despite only using a few notes themselves. For example, “Bulls on
Parade” still manages to have several interesting elements going
on, like the bass line or the different sections of the song which
keep the song interesting.
Although
I don't usually talk about the music videos when I do reviews, it
makes sense to talk about it here. There were a lot of guest
appearances in the music video, including Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and for
some reason, Pauly Shore. What really burns though is that Flea from
the Red Hot Chili Peppers was also in the video at the 2:03 mark. And
all I can think of is that there was so much wasted potential there.
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| "What should we do with Flea?" "Have him hump the amplifier!" |
It's
practically a sin to have one of the most talented bassists in
alternative rock appear in your music video and not play
something on your song. It's like getting Eddie Van Halen in your
music video and not having him play a single note of guitar.
It's such an obvious move. At the very least, one of
Flea's funk grooves would have brought something musically
interesting to this song.
Of
course, the main reason I reviewed this track wasn't to critique the
bland instrumentation or poor use of bassists, it was for the
god-awful “2edgy4me” lyrics that sound less convincing the more I
hear them. If you read the words before actually listening to the
song, it comes across as a man who is pissed for no reason
at all. Going back to Rage Against the Machine, their singer Zach de
la Rocha was always angry for a good reason in their songs (*cough*
politics *cough*). The band is basically the definition of righteous
fury.
But
what is Durst pissed about exactly? The song never gives a reason for
why Durst is so angry: was it because his girlfriend broke up with
him? Was it because his dog got run over? Was it because the
batteries in his remote control died and he had to watch CSPAN?
Nobody knows! Lines like “You don't really know why/ But
you want justify/ Rippin' someone's head off” don't happen
in a vacuum... unless you're Fred Durst, evidently. If this song gave
Durst a proper motivation (or ANY motivation) to be acting like an
angry asshole, then I would like it a little more. For all I know,
maybe there's a good reason he's angry.
Instead,
Durst wrote this song about waking up being irrationally angry for no
reason at all. The very first lines in this song are:
“Its just one of those days/ When you don't wanna wake up/ Everything is fucked/ Everybody sucks”
which
is kind of absurd. It just paints this mental image of a man who
wakes up angry, brushes his teeth angry, showers angry, puts on
clothes angry, makes scrambled eggs angry, and so on. This song
sounds less like it was written by a "dangerous" person,
and more like it was written by a spoiled 15 year old boy with anger
management issues. Or a douche.
Sauce:
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