Big Dumb Face
Duke Lion Fights the Terror!!
Flip/Geffen
In interview after interview, Limp Bizkit’s ebony-eyed guitar miscreant Wes Borland makes it quite clear he hates his band almost as much you hate his band. Instead of encouraging Durst’s poorly copy-edited pals in Korn and Staind, Borland would rather reference the skittery beats of Aphex Twin, the disorienting avant-jazz-grind of John Zorn’s Naked City, and the quirky poop-joke-riddled peculiarity of Ween. Borland’s debut, under the nom de freak Big Dumb Face, is fortunately heavy on the latter, and unfortunately (and entirely) deficient on the former two.
It would be a challenging exercise indeed to listen to this record – with its incessant genre-hopping, teensy drum machine pops, high-pitched distorted vocals, and intentionally retarded lyrics (“We like fun/Games are fun/Fun is good/Robots are good”) – and not think Pure Guava-era Ween. But the album certainly finds its charm though a nihilistic attitude, holding “dumb fun at all costs” as overlying philosophy. And dumb fun reigns supreme, with a bizarre medieval-cum-robots-cum-Gwar concept that either will excite or alienate the “Xanth” novel set, and a fantastic ear for both sonic cheez and crushing distortion.
But above all, the album is a great “fuck you” record in the same vein as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Chew on the questionable logic: the guitarist in arguably the most popular band in the world releases a hyper-eccentric solo record – complete with country songs about sword-swinging gladiators, comical death-metal with Strange Brew samples, and, um, the “Mighty Penis Laser” – that all Limp Bizkit fans will certainly despise. Probably the biggest “fuck you,” however, is to all the smug Bizkit-detractors who will miss out on a gloriously fun record due to Borland’s association with the mook-metal mainstays.
Flip/Geffen, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404
