Review Summary: Limp Bizkit gives a solid work, but a poorly booked finish.
How much self-awareness can you have going through a flaming table in your teenage friend’s back yard. Do you smell what The Rock is cooking. Austin 3:16 says I just kicked your ass. Do not try this at home. It’s fixed and technically fake, but “it ain’t fake when we start the riots”. Well if that aint true.
It’s not a coincidence Limp Bizkit’s meteoric rise coincided with WWE’s (WWF at the time) Attitude era. The parallels are endless and Limp Bizkit would routinely be used as an accompaniment for several WWE promos. In the late 90s and early 00s, WWE and Limp Bizkit were a match made in heaven. They were both simultaneously fake and real, both male expressions of security or lack of and most importantly both dumb as hell yet entertaining. They go hand-in-hand as defining pop culture of the time.
Significant Other is Limp Bizkit’s landmark album that propelled them, for better or worse, into our collective consciousness. Fronted by Fred Durst, in his iconic red baseball cap, we listen to his whines, shouts, laments and raps all backed by some heavy hitting guitars, drums, and yes, DJ scratching. The sound here is the epitome of Nu Metal: a blended amalgam of metal, hip-hop and electronica. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. “Break Stuff” goes hard as Durst has a bad day and threatens with a chainsaw, whereas “Don’t Go Off Wondering” gets lost in the shuffle when it gets languid. Durst and company needed to be edited more as tracks begin to sound too similar the deeper into the album. Durst posturing. Durst misogynistic ranting. Durst being Durst. Lather, rinse, repeat.
When Significant Other ends, it’s hard not to view it in its totality as slight. Angst-ridden ranting with a signature sound, not much else here folks, the show’s over. However, Limp Bizkit was not going for and have never gone for depth. Instead, like WWE, they’ve always been entertainment for young males who wanted and needed an outlet to be aggressive. To see bra and panties matches. To have “just one of those days”. Of course, the dark side of this all is when someone really gets hurt. When Owen Hart drops to his death. When Woodstock 99 gets out of hand. When Jessica Michalik dies in a mosh pit. That is when you realize that sometimes the faker the better and when Limp Bizkit is at their fakest, their silliest, their most obvious, they are at their best. On Significant Other, we get a mixed bag.
