Music

Limp Bizkit and Interscope part ways after 'Gold Cobra' sells just 63,000 copies

by Tyler Munro

Fred Durst says he’s happy Limp Bizkit can finally be “independent” after reports surface that the band has severed all ties with Interscope records. According to Neilsen Soundscan, Gold Cobra—the band’s latest record released this past June—has sold only 63,000 copies so far. By comparison, the band’s horribly named Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water sold over one million copies in its first week.

News of the split comes on a day that’s likely hammered the final nail into the coffin holding the early noughties music scene. Earlier today we reported that Napster has closed its doors after being absorbed by Rhapsody.

For Limp Bizkit, this comes as the latest sign of the times. Two years ago the band was forced to cancel a handful of tour dates when they failed to sell enough tickets, which prompted Durst to back-pedal and claim the decisions to cancel came not as a result of poor ticket sales, but because Limp Bizkit isn’t “an amphitheatre” band, anyways.

On the recent split from Interscope, who’s had a hand in releasing every Limp Bizkit album thus far, Durst is doing his best to keep the idea of Limp Bizkit as a live act alive, saying on the Poolside With Dean Delray podcast that “[Limp Bizkit was] all about the live show. Once we realized we had to start writing records, that became the obstacle.”

And as for the band’s tendency to tour primarily outside of the US? Durst implies that it’s got nothing to do with ticket sales, noting that “in the United States, man, they’re waiting on a song, they’re waiting on a hit, and the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily operate that way; they’re, sort of, career people.” [via Blabbermouth]