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…………………you know, before we dig into this one I think I might need to clarify something; that photo is not a joke.
That is the actual cover for the actual album.
I feel like if I really wanted to get into why this album “ruined” Bloodhound Gang I could just point to this album cover and ask, “any questions?” and we would all say “nope, point taken.”
But it is my job as a critic to give the albums I review an honest assessment, so here we are.
The Bloodhound Gang.
When you talk about Bloodhound Gang, peoples’ minds typically go to one song, and one song only: “The Bad Touch.” The song as well as the video both perfectly encapsulate the 90s in one short 4-minute time frame; a video featuring the band in literal monkey costumes causing mischief and mayhem around Paris, France while being soundtracked by a Euro dance-pop song that gave us the iconic chorus of…
“you and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”
Bloodhound Gang, “The Bad Touch” (1999)
That line still gets people of a certain age group going in 2022, 23 years after its release. It was even referenced in “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem less than a year later at a time when Eminem was probably near his absolute peak as an artist. For all intents and purposes that song is their legacy which would lead many to write them off as a one-hit wonder (which ignores that their song “Fire Water Burn” was also a hit on the alternative music charts, but I digress).
It’s hard to imagine it now considering this pseudo-one-hit-wonder status but Bloodhound Gang were big in the 90s and early 00s, and by big I mean biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig. They played big festivals, their second album One Fierce Beer Coaster went gold in the US and their third album Hooray for Boobies went gold AND platinum in multiple countries, you google Chasey Lain (…for all intents and purposes I’d look that up in an incognito tab) and the main results are not about the pornstar herself, but for their song “The Ballad of Chasey Lain”. That is absolutely insane. I guess to put it in a modern-day perspective it would be like if The 1975 wrote a song about Ivy LeBelle and it got so big that it turned her into just a reference point for that song. The internet is for porn and that shit doesn’t just happen, but it did for Bloodhound Gang.
So for all of that and for their legacy to have been reduced to one song I couldn’t help but wonder “what the fuck happened here?” The answer might be real easy depending on how you’re looking at it; they were a doofy joke band with lyrics that absolutely would not fly if they came out now and both time and the general listening community have just moved on from them. There. Plain and simple. Now I don’t need to keep writing about this.
This is Harvey VD reminding you to kick out the ROUGE! motherfuckers! Peace.
…hold on, that can’t be right. Their greatest hits album, appropriately titled Show Us Your Hits chronicles the band and it shows that their history more or less ends in 2007 alongside a song they released on that comp which came out in 2010. Hooray for Boobies came out in 1999, there isn’t just 11 years of music and history missing from the group, what happened?
Well if Hooray for Boobies came out in 1999 and they had a pretty decent legacy at that point, and Show Us Your Hits came out in 2010, so really there’s only one assumption that could be made; the answer can be found in 2005’s Hefty Fine, their follow-up to Hooray. Right?
I went investigating further.
…actually before we get too deep into this I just need to say something up front; I think one thing that definitely didn’t help Bloodhound Gang was the length of the wait for Hefty Fine. Six years. Five if you’re counting when Hooray got a wider rerelease And this wasn’t in the era of streaming and unlimited content to tide us over, this was in the very early days of the internet and at a time when 6 years felt like 6 centuries. The shift in culture and humor certainly didn’t help as well, especially when one realizes that an entire new century came, a national tragedy happened in America and it reflected in how we consumed entertainment as made evident in how by some measures Freddy Got Fingered is the last real piece of pre-9/11 humor, and that thing is an experience from start to finish.
A lot has happened in the band as well, most notably that their drummer Spanky G who had been with them on Beer Coaster and Hooray left the band shortly after recording Hooray (but still appears on the album cover) under what has generally been considered mysterious circumstances (with many assuming it was the bullying he endured by some of the band members, primarily their bassist Evil Jared Hasslehoff, as evidenced in their DVD One Fierce Beer Run) and has now been replaced by the appropriately-titled Willie The New Guy, who appears in some of the music videos from the Hooray album. Aside from that the band has still remained with the main core of lead vocalist Jimmy Pop, guitarist Lupus Thunder, the aforementioned bassist Evil Jared, and turntable/backing vocal/hype guy DJ Q Ball. It’s not the first time that the band has had a lineup overhaul or a changing of members, but Spanky G’s drumming really gave off a certain vibe on the two albums he was around for, so what Willie would bring to the table with the group was still uncertain.
So after 5 years and a lineup change the wait is over, and Bloodhound Gang have a new album coming out called Hefty Fine, but before the album comes out we’re treated to the leadoff single from the record, called “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.”
Alright, five years in the making now, let’s see what Jimmy and the boys have come up with.
Huh. Well, that’s… something I guess.
Something feels off about the lyrics though.
Vulcanize the whoopee stick
In the ham walletCattle prod the oyster ditch
With the lap rocketBatter-dip the cranny axe
In the gut lockerRetro-fit the pudding hatch, ooh la la
Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)
With the boink swatter
Hmmmm….
FOXTROT!
Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)
UNIFORM!
CHARLIE!
KILO!
wait…
Foxtrot
Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)
Uniform
Charlie
Kilo
…oh those boys.
If it’s not obvious, the song is pretty much this. Two verses of sexual innuendo, two choruses of doing the NATO alphabet spelling for “fuck,” and then this wonderful outro where they say…
put the you-know-what in the you-know where
Bloodhound Gang, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” (2005)
…but that’s not surprising by any stretch of the imagination. Lyrically this has almost always been their jam so it’s not much of a surprise but it does feel kinda low-effort. It might come off as laughable to a lot of folks who may consider themselves listeners of a more sophisticated taste but deep down there’s always been a lot of good lines in Bloodhound Gang songs that would actually come off deep and profound when taken out of context. Even a lot of those out of context lines are pretty clever and interesting, but that’s just my two cents. Here they basically give you a bunch of innuendo for the exact same thing and then wrap it up with the title of the track. There’s no substance here is what I’m getting at. I do find something funny though about doing verses of innuendo before the choruses say “I don’t want to beat around the bush.” Ironic, eh?
Musically there isn’t much going on here, either. “Foxtrot…” is a fairly straight-forward pop-punk jam with beefy chords, a singalong chorus, synths to add a little bit to the sound and a neat little riff to go with it all as well. I will say that it’s nice to have the first single off this album be a song with the full band playing on it unlike most of the singles off Hooray which mostly highlighted the “Jimmy Pop Show” factor of the group and in turn sort of erased the other personalities of the band and what made them all so great in their own regards.
So “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” gets a thumbs-up from me, it’s not awful but I guess I could’ve expected a little bit more. I wouldn’t skip it if it came on a playlist of Bloodhound Gang songs.
Alright, that came out in August of 2005, the full album arrives a month later. After years of waiting between Bloodhound Gang albums you finally open the CD, pop it in the tray, and the first thing you hear is this…
…a fucking skit.
You know what, it’s an 8-second skit, let’s share it here for those of you who don’t click the links.
Jimmy Pop: “Eminem’s gotta cuss in his raps to sell records, well me too! So fuck Will Smith!“
Bloodhound Gang, “Strictly For the Tardcore (Skit)”
DJ Q-Ball: “That don’t rhyme”
Jim: “Drats! …haha”
…you know, that line is way more relevant than I could’ve ever imagined it being in the current year, except for the fact that the song being referenced here was already five years old by the time this album came out. Incidentally the song in question is also the one where Eminem referenced Bloodhound Gang, so maybe it’s a “thank you” of sorts?
But that’s still not exactly a thrilling opening note for a record. To be fair neither is the follow-up track and the first actual song on the album, “Balls Out.”
You know, for 2005 this song is severely out-of-date with that crunk rock opening and the nu-metal influences that are all over it. I don’t want to say crunk was never popular because that’s Lil Jon erasure and we don’t do that around these parts, but this song is trying way too hard to keep up with the heavyweights of a genre that was way out of vogue by then. Hell even with the second wave of “angry white boy metal” bands that came up around the time Limp Bizkit more or less killed the first wave of nu-metal single-handed when they released their 2004 album (and probable future feature on this blog) Results May Vary, why the band chose to go this route for a song is beyond me.
Lyrically the song is supposed to feel braggadocious, and it does, but it falls flat in the execution. Even Jimmy Pop’s screaming on the chorus feels like he’s phoning it in and that’s not something you wanna do on a song like this. What’s more, a lot of folks have actually called this Bloodhound Gang’s worst song ever, and I’d be somewhat inclined to agree which says a lot considering I could never really get through Use Your Fingers and they’ve done way worse metal pastiches like “Yummy Down On This.” (Yes, I will personally die on that hill if I have to.)
That was a painful stretch to get through, “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo” comes after that and we know how that song sounds already since we heard it before right? Right? Great.
Up next we get to my personal favorite off the album, “I’m The Least You Can Do.” You know what works about this song and why it’s so interesting to me and me personally? It has dynamics. It has parts. Identifiable moving parts. Not just “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, everything chugs along at the same speed” parts, like actual identifiable things go on for the entirety of the song. The piano riff absolutely rips, the way the real drums interact with the drum machines works way better than it should, the guitars aren’t severely out-of-place on here, and the synth choices here are A+. Lyrically it deals with Jimmy Pop being a bit more desperate than usual as the title of the song is uttered in the chorus.
I’m the least you can do
Bloodhound Gang, “I’m The Least You Could Do” (2005)
If only life were as easy as you
I would still get screwed
The other joke here is that the girl in question is really dumb. Really that’s the only joke in the song, and even then it’s not that much of a funny one. I should clarify that I’m not one of those people who would clutch their pearls if they heard Bloodhound Gang lyrics for the first time, but if this was my first impression of the band I really would’ve given myself a headache with how often I roll my eyes back. With that said this is still a noticeable improvement over “Balls Out” and is one of the better songs on this album by a couple country miles but that’s still not exactly a high bar to clear.
After this we get a short little song called “Farting With A Walkman On.” It follows the Moby trick of repeating something over and over again but each repeat adds a new element to the table. The comparison to Moby here is probably spot-on depending on who you talk to but ironic considering the name of the album was supposed to be Heavy Flow before they found out that was the name of a Moby song (various members have expressed disliking Moby in the past) so they switched up the title to avoid any association with him. Unfortunately the lyrics are the same verse repeated a couple times, which is great when you’ve got a strong verse or at least a couple funny lines to work with but some of this stuff is not great.
I know you’re gonna play me
Bloodhound Gang, “Farting With A Walkman On” (2005)
when you get wind
I heard you’re full of shit, so
I’ve been duped again
but if you cover your ass
with the same old song
you might as well be farting
farting with a walkman on
I guess the second half of that verse is alright but it’s not that strong of a punchline to lean on and repeat three times before going into a guitar solo. There’s an idea here but it feels like an incomplete idea.
The next track is another skit called “Diarrhea Runs In The Family” and consists of one of the band members going to the bathroom for about 30 seconds. I’m not linking it. If you wanna hear someone pass a bowel movement, that’s all on you, my dear reader. Some even say that’s the album in a nutshell.
We’re about halfway through this record and all I can really think is that this album so far honestly sounds way too fucking depressing to be a Bloodhound Gang album. What the fuck is going on here? How does a band go from bangers like “Mope” to funeral dirges like “Farting With A Walkman On?”
Well, in the six years between Hooray and Hefty a lot has happened in the band’s career that doesn’t even dive into possible label-artist politics that might have possibly delayed the release (this album was recorded between 2001 and 2004 but wasn’t released until a whole year later, why’s that?)
Jimmy Pop, as well as the band as a whole, has not only crossed over into his 30s but has allegedly gotten to a stage in his career where drug addiction has gotten the best of him. Jimmy in particular has started battling depression and the medicine he’s on for it has started to make him feel fatigued, which explains why he sounds so depressed on these songs and why he’s phoning it in on them as well; he’s not phoning it in, he’s just tired. As someone who also fights with his own depression and the effects of it I absolutely feel for him in a way I didn’t expect to. It also explains why this album has been described by some as his “angry” record, because once you read into the lyrics of a lot of these songs, there’s a lot of venom and malice directed at unspecified people and it’s so unlike the band as a whole. (Usually their malice is directed at various groups in a punching-down moment or two or way too many I don’t want to get into here). On Hefty Fine Jimmy Pop just sounds bitter at life.
So we’re halfway through this album, where do we go from here?
Well… have you guys ever heard of this wacky television series called The Simpsons?
Make no beef about it, The Simpsons are a pillar of American pop culture and a show that Bloodhound Gang have a soft spot for. They’ve put Simpsons references in their songs before, they even have a song at the end of One Fierce Beer Coaster where Jimmy Pop does his best impression of Homer Simpson, and of course there’s the “holy macaroni” line at the end of “Mope” that closes out the clusterfuck of a song. Surely there’s gonna be more Simpsons shenanigans on this record at some point, right?
Enter “Ralph Wiggum.”
The second half of Hefty Fine kicks off with yet another pop-punk romp all about everyone’s favorite comic relief and one-liner machine, the titular character of this song. The pop-punk stuff is alright so far, I guess, but the lyrics are where this band has always shined brightest. Surely Jimmy Pop will give us some lyrical gold here, right?
…well…
I’m going to Africa
Yes ma’am
I’m a brick
Was president Lincoln okay?
Mittens
There’s a dog in the vent
Chicken necks?
I pick Ken Griffey Jr.
I fell out 2 times
I’m pedaling backwards
This snowflake tastes like fish sticks
We’re a totem pole
Dying tickles
I hear a frankenstein lives there
She’s touching my special area
Go banana!
Bloodhound Gang, “Ralph Wiggum” (2005)
…Jimmy Pop didn’t write any lyrics for this. He just searched through piles and piles of Simpsons scripts, grabbed his favorite lines, and arranged them accordingly.
You know, for all my bitching about some of the lyrical choices he’s made on this album so far, I’d still say that some of the best parts of Bloodhound Gang are the lyrics through and through. I still quote the chorus to “Take The Long Way Home” a lot and even considered getting a tattoo of it once because it’s a straight-up great line. I’ve combed over some of this stuff off Hooray For Boobies for hours on end before just to fully grasp everything being spoken about because yeah, sure, you’ll get a song where the hook rips off Pink Floyd, but then the deeper dig shows a fantastic amount of wordplay going on. One Fierce Beer Coaster has more than its fair share of great lyrics as well, and there’s even songs further down this album that have great lyrics (so no it’s not all bad here). But to have the lyrics all revolve around one-liners that have been taking out of context is just a poor choice all around. The crazy part about this to me is that I’m in the minority with this opinion; a lot of fans of the group even now still say “Ralph Wiggum” is the highlight of the album for them. Different strokes for different folks though, right?
Up next we get “Something Diabolical,” one of the few “serious” songs Bloodhound Gang ever did. This one features that style of baton-passing on the mic between Jimmy Pop and DJ Q-Ball that has made for some of Bloodhound Gang’s best material in the past, it can’t fail here, right? Well, it can’t but also it can. I’ll come out and say that I like the idea the song is trying to present here, and I like the feature from Ville Valo of the band H.I.M. (who released some things on Pop’s vanity label at one point) on the chorus, but ultimately this song feels both unfinished and way too long at the same time. It’s the longest song on the record, clocking in at a little over 5 minutes and it gives us barely anything outside of “heh, satan, am I right guys?” and a vaguely moody backing track. Even in trying to bring in a guest vocalist to bring something to the track, Valo just feels shoehorned in here. This isn’t Bloodhound Gang material point-blank.
Another skit follows this. It’s stupid. We’re not talking about it.
After the dumb skit is a song named after their home state of “Pennsylvania,” and even though it was never released as an official single to promote the album a little bit of extra research shows that they started a campaign to make the track the official song of the Keystone State. See? That’s nice, it’s always cool to see bands do songs about their home state and bring a little bit of that hometown pride out, right?
Uhhhh… how do I put this?
Read this for yourself.
We are “Cop Rock”
Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)
We are Screech
We are Z. Cavaricci
We are laser-removed
Tasmanian Devil tattoos
We are third string we are puck
We are special people’s club
We are the half shirts with
Irreverent spring break top ten lists
…ohhhhh god.
We are munsoned we are squat
Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)
We are flashing twelve o’clock
We are spread out butt cheeks
Pulled apart so just the air leaks
We are “ishtar” we are tab
We are no right turn on red
We are the moustaches
The Beatles grew when they dropped acid
…what the fuck is going on here?
So they don’t really like their state so they made a song comparing it to all of the worst things in the world. I’ll admit, this is pretty clever and genuinely one of the only times where the pop-punk thing they do actually works. I also really like the chorus because it still reeks of that “Jimmy Pop is depressed” thing but it feels fun. The song overall feels fun. This is what I expected when I pressed “play” on this album, not the stuff that came before this. This is top-tier Bloodhound stuff.
The funniest part, and truly one of the most Pennsylvanian lines, comes at the end, too, by which point I’m audibly laughing way harder than I’d like to admit.
Girl do you even know what a Wawa is?
Bloodhound Gang, “Pennsylvania” (2005)
Do you even know what a Wawa is?
Girl do you even know what a Wawa is?
Do you even know what a Wawa is?
I’m in a state of P-fuckin’-A.
I mean c’mon, anybody who’s talked to anybody from PA knows that at some point Wawa always factors into a conversation, it’s just the facts of life. The drummer in one of my previous bands is from PA and he’s brought it up multiple times (mostly in regards to saying it’s better than Sheetz) and it feels like the specific reference that was needed to drive home the regional flavor of this song. A-fucking-plus, Jimmy.
After that we get the second official single off the album, “Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss.” It’s got that danceable backing beat on the drum machine, a noodly guitar loop, sexual innuendos out the ass and plenty of synths to work with. I kinda like this fine enough, but it’s got one glaring problem with it; this song is trying way too hard to be “The Bad Touch 2.0.” Catching lightning in a bottle once is rare, twice is damn near impossible and they’re trying so hard to tempt fate here. Even the title is made to sound like the noises one makes when they try replicating that europop dance beat like the one prominently featured in “The Bad Touch.” That song was already kinda stale in 2005 on its own because that sort of music was no longer en-vogue like it was back in the free-for-all era of the 90s, so the fact the band revisited that sound on a new song was just a bad idea. They’d do another rehash of the formula on the 2007 song “Screwing You on the Beach At Night” that feels infinitely funnier on just the song along before you get into the music video. Also important to note this was released as the second single a couple of months after the album’s release when it was more-or-less already dead in the water, and likewise this single did nothing on the charts in America despite managing to chart in other countries that were more open to their shenanigans.
The final track on the album is the third and final single off this album entitled “No Hard Feelings.” The song didn’t chart anywhere and didn’t even get a music video which doesn’t help the single much either. In my opinion it’s one of their best songs, bar-none. When I mentioned that this was Jimmy Pop’s “angry” album, it especially comes through on this song. Lyrically it’s a breakup song that takes the attitude of “well fuck you, too.” There’s a lot of gems in this song too such as…
Maybe you got screwed, but I dumped you
Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)
Cause you ain’t nothin’ but trash
I put out despite the, fact that you’re like a
Hawaiian Punch mustache
Right under my nose
If I want to be repeatedly shit on
Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)
I’ll go make Dutch porn
Maybe it ain’t your birthday
Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)
But then again ya know I wouldn’t give a fuck
When what I shoulda got is over ya sooner so now
I’m just gonna wrap it up
but not every line on here is a winner.
I’m missing you like a hijacked flight on September 11th
Bloodhound Gang, “No Hard Feelings” (2005)
I don’t know who got on you but I’m not wrong in thanking them
WHOA WHOA WHOA HOLD THE FUCK UP HERE.
Look, I like edgy humor as much as the next guy but I don’t personally like 9/11 jokes, especially since it’s a very real thing that happened where a lot of people died and it was used as propaganda for a boondoggle in the middle-east, and I DON’T LIKE THEM IN 2005, 4 YEARS AFTER THEY FUCKING HAPPENED.
Okay, that’s one really bad line. I’ll live. I’ll cringe but I’ll live.
Aside from that one line I really like this one. It’s kinda got this interesting little backbeat going for it and it’s got a nice blend of electronica and grunge influences. The guitars absolutely rip on this thing as well, and when they come back in on the bridge the entire mood changes with it. The song also ends on a beautiful guitar solo that perfectly closes the album off, too.
That’s the album proper unless you listen to the last skit that closes it out. Yes, another skit.
I think really that’s my big gripe with this album; there’s 13 tracks on this thing, 4 of which are skits. Skits on albums are rarely if ever funny, and really the only welcome part of it is that opening skit as a nod to the Eminem reference. So there’s 9 actual songs on the album. Out of those 9 songs, there’s maybe 5 that I personally like (“Balls Out,” which in spite of all my bitching I kinda have a soft spot for, “Foxtrot…” “I’m The Least You Can Do,” “Pennsylvania,” “No Hard Feelings.”) Take away the skits, the songs that sound unfinished, and the overall bad songs, and you’ve got a 5-track EP. Basically people waited 6 years for an EP. If I’m a Bloodhound fan during that time, I’d think that’s insulting.
I feel like at some point in these articles I always say “the fallout from this was bad” but this one is flag-raising in just how bad the fallout from it really was. It only peaked 10 positions lower than Hooray for Boobies did on the charts, but unlike Hooray, Hefty Fine didn’t certify anything in America, and only got certified gold in Austria and Germany. It peaked at 24 which isn’t bad but it fell out of the charts almost as quickly as it came up, and didn’t feature any singles that charted in America. That’s bad compared to the success of Hooray and its singles.
One of the things the band said in previous interviews was that it was nice that their label Geffen Records didn’t want an immediate follow-up to an album that was, by all accounts, an absolutely smashing success, but the downside of that was just how much the cultural zeitgeist changed in the years between albums. In various interviews the band also more or less admitted that they knew the album was shit and that was probably what did them in with their fans who waited 5 years for 9 songs, but at least they can admit that no matter how sarcastic they tried to make those comments come off. A select group of reviews from RateYourMusic all gave the album pretty bad reviews so there’s a bunch of vocal fans who didn’t like it. Hindsight has given the album a bit more charm to the group’s fans and a lot of them have also said they actually really like the album a lot and that it was never gonna be a particularly loved album regardless of how good it was gonna be. Fair play to them.
The real issue was always going to be with critics though.
The band have always said they didn’t care about good reviews because “the only bands that get good reviews are bands like Dave Matthews Band” so that was never gonna be their bag, and critics were never big Bloodhound fans in the first place either. Even their best work got reviews that could be summed up as “eh, it’s okay, I guess” but things were about to get bad.
Critically, Hefty Fine absolutely booooooooombed.
Allmusic gave it a 2.5/5, Billboard gave it a negative review, PopMatters gave it a 2/10, HotPress gave it a 0/5, IGN gave it a 3/10, and all these reviews give the exact same general consensus; “the joke isn’t funny anymore, and fart jokes have never been funny so why did they do these?” That’s just sharing some of the kinder reviews. All of this also helped contribute to giving it the hefty honor of making it the second-worst reviewed album of all-time on Metacritic with a lowly metascore of 28, only 7 points off from the poorly-reviewed Playing With Fire by Kevin Federline and 8 points worse than Results May Very by Limp Bizkit. That’s absolutely insane. That is absolutely fucking insane.
I find it kind of insulting that the album got this much critical bitchslapping and yet history hasn’t even relegated it to any of those “worst music of all time” albums, it doesn’t have an infamous following the way something like Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs might, it doesn’t come up on any Wikipedia articles about “music considered the worst” like how the Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack does and really this album is an artifact that the world has done its best to leave in 2005. For a band who had a hit song about fucking, that was explicitly about fucking, to have their follow-up album get forgotten like that is absolutely nuts.
What happened to the group after the release of the album, I can’t quite tell you. What I can share is that guitarist Lupus Thunder and drummer Willie The New Guy both left the band in 2007 and 2006 respectively and were both replaced by members of a band called A. The group spent the better part of 10 years trying to, and unsuccessfully work on a new album until the long-awaited follow-up Hard Off came out in 2015, and the general consensus there was that it wasn’t a good record either, even by the standards of many Bloodhound fans. I sometimes wonder how much the negative press of Hefty Fine factored into the longer wait between albums. The band kinda fizzled out after the released of Hard-Off and though Jimmy Pop has popped up as a guest artist here and there in various songs he’s more-or-less stuck by the admission that he’s retired, though bassist Evil Jared Hasselhoff has said he’d still consider himself a member of the band.
Personally, I don’t like to whine about “cancel culture” because it’s not the big old boogeyman that many want to make it out to be, and the general conversation about how “[thing] can’t happen now because everyone’s a bunch of snowflakes” or whatever is dumb because there’s always this implication of “I don’t like that I can’t punch-down without getting called-out anymore” but genuinely Bloodhound Gang is, both musically and lyrically, simply a product of a point in time, plain and simple. They also say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ll absolutely judge this album by its cover.
On an unrelated note, these days it’s actually pretty fun to follow Lupus Thunder on Instagram in particular because he’s always sharing nice historical photos of the group back when he was a member. They all seem pretty content and happy with what they’ve all done, and sometimes having the guys on social media share the memories themselves is just as good as the concept of a Bloodhound reunion tour.
Who knows though? Maybe one day Jimmy Pop will come out of “retirement,” reunite with Lupus and Willie, grab the others, and do one last tour for the sake of doing it all over again one more time. If they don’t they’ll still have a heck of a legacy and two albums that will probably continue to have their share of vocal critics but whose sounds are as great now as they were then. They wouldn’t want it any other way.
This is Harvey VD reminding you to get your balls out, and kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers! Peace.
ROUGE! Azul Productions 