God bless the Internet. I mean, where else can the average person like me get their

God bless the Internet. I mean, where else can the average person like me get their hands on an album 3 WEEKS before it's release short of stealing one (Well, I guess what I'm doing is stealing. Oh well.) With that being said, I present to you a review of Limp Bizkit's forthcoming album, "Chocolate Starfish & The Hot-Dog Flavored Water".

When I heard Limp Bizkit cover "Faith", I started digging their (at the time) unique style. Their 2nd album was good enough for me to..ahem..."backup". Fred Durst had said in an interview that "Significant Other" was an album to get them notice and that the new album would be something more in the style he wanted the band to go. For those curious, Durst has said that "Chocolate Starfish" obviously refers to assholes and represents him, and that "Hot-Dog Flavored Water" is the rest of the band. Sadly however, Durst failed to deliver on this promise with the new album and most of the tracks sound like leftovers or rehashes of songs found on "Significant Other".

Apparently the trend these days is to verbally bash other artists inside your song.Eminem did it to Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera, Cannibus did it to Ll Cool J and Wyclef did it to Cannibus. And now Limp Bizkit decides to get into the act. Thanks in part to the video by Nine Inch Nails for their song off of "The Fragile" entitled "Starfuckers Inc.", in which Trent Reznor smashes with a baseball (ala a carnival game) ceramic plates of various pop stars, Durst being included. And as you can more than likely predict, Durst decided to return the favor. On the song "Hot Dog", Durst rips off flat out the chorus from NIN's "Closer" and rewords it to a backlash against Reznor. While Eminem's rhymes at Christina Aguilera comes off as funny, Durst's sounds whiny like a 4 year old. And the key difference in their respective disses is that Aguilera has no real musical talent, where as Reznor is far more gifted than Durst will ever be. Limp Bizkit also "borrows" from other artists as well, including Ice Cube and a scratching by Bizkit's own DJ Lethal that sounds very much like the NON scratching that Rage Against The Machine does with guitars.

That is not to say the album doesn't have good tracks though. The first single, "My Generation" is old school Bizkit,while tracks like "Getcha Groove On" features a well placed cameo by up and coming rapper Xzbit. "Hold On" is a weird sort of depressing/catchy ballad with Stone Temple Pilots resident druggy...I mean lead singer, Scott Weiland but is a pretty good song overall, carried by Weiland's vocals. However, other tracks including "Rollin" (in two VERY annoying versions, one being a horrible mishmash of rappers like DMX, Redman, Xzbit and Method Man), "Livin It Up", "It'll Be Okay" and "Full Nelson" sound like songs that could easily have been added to any of the band's two previous releases.

Overall, the CD isn't nearly as poppy or catchy as "Significant Other", with the exception of a few songs. The problem is, Durst and his band mates rested on their laurels more than they should have with this album, no longer rapping/rocking about lost loves but more about fame. The album feels rushed and the band probably should have dropped a handful of the tracks in exchange for returning to the studio and tweaking some new ones. And yet none of this will matter in the end; The album could be utter shit, and yet it will sell like crazy here where, as Durst puts it "Platinum comes in 8 stacks". After all, MTV has to have something to play between the latest N'Sync & Britney Spears videos...