Bloodhound Gang – ‘Hefty Fine’ (Geffen Records) Released 26/09/05

 

The Bloodhound Gang are back with a fourth attempt to make the soundtrack to drinking a keg of beer, soiling yourself, vomiting on a girl’s tits, and finding it all very funny indeed. The boys may be a couple of years older, in fact they can’t be far off old enough to have fathered children of the average age of their audience, but show a lack of maturity that Peter Pan would envy.  Come on, what were you expecting?  A coming-of-age confessional?  A denouncement of porn, drink, and swearing?  A prog odyssey?  No.  Relax.  You are never more than a couple of lines away from a knob gag, toilet humour, or a crime against political correctness. 

 

Frontman Jimmy Pop’s tight, fast rhyming allows him to drop in an impossible number of innuendos as he steers the subject matter from shagging (‘Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo’ – see what he’s done there?) and hookers (‘I’m The Least You Could Do’) to, er, more shagging.  Meanwhile they even find time to include an ‘hilarious’ recording of someone taking a large dump.  When not describing screwing women, there is occasional mention of arguing with them (‘Farting With A Walkman On’), and getting dumped by them (No Hard Feelings’ – “Ain’t my job/To **** you on your birthday/Anymore”), generally accompanied by a dash of self-loathing.  The alternative anthem for their home state, ‘Pennsylvania’ raises a smile at least (“We are the moustaches/The Beatles grew when they dropped acid”).

 

All this emotionally-stunted indulgence is matched by the efforts of the band.  Diverse it may be - they still make use of rap-metal, punk and techno – and the production is slick, but the album doesn’t have anything anywhere near as catchy, let alone as ‘clever’, as their last hit ‘The Bad Touch’.  ‘Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss’ is the most obvious attempt at repeating that radio-friendly techno song-about-being-horny formula but misses the mark. 

 

Ok, so it’s dumb, and it’s rude, but panning it for this alone is as pointless as criticising Osama Bin Laden for the length of his beard.  Stoopid is what these guys do, they’ve been doing it for ages and they don’t give a toss if you think you are too clever for them.  But the problem here is that it just isn’t very funny. Don’t take this the wrong way, this writer likes a good knob gag as much as anyone and even has an enviable collection of Viz back issues, but on ‘Hefty Fine’ Bloodhound Gang seem like they are just going through the motions. No pun intended.