A most welcome disappearing act

Their fourth and latest album, "Results May Vary,'' is still hovering in the top 20 of the Billboard album chart four weeks after its much-delayed release. But sales of the album are a major drop-off from the numbers garnered by the band's previous album, 2001's chart-topping "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water,'' which racked up 1 million first-week sales, the best for any rock CD since SoundScan began tracking record sales in 1991.

And it's not just sales figures that have shifted. In July, limpbizkit (formerly Limp Bizkit) was pelted with bottles and coins before being booed and jeered off the stage at the "Summer Sanitarium'' tour stop outside Chicago. Then, earlier this month, 172 fans filed a class-action suit against the band for its abbreviated Chicago set, which was supposed to last 90 minutes but ended after only 17 minutes because of the incident.

No longer MTV and alternative rock-radio darlings, limpbizkit is fading from the pop-culture landscape, sounding a welcome death knell for the Revenge of the Mooks era ushered in by the band - or, to be more precise, its ignominious king, Fred Durst.

A few years ago, the Jacksonville, Fla., rap-rock band led by egomaniacal lunkhead Durst was arguably the biggest band in the world, and popular music seemed all the dumber for it. With a drunken frat-boy brutishness, Durst positioned his band as a hard-edged alternative to the frothy teen pop of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, even though he genuflected before the same insidious forces - namely, MTV's "Total Request Live'' and its host, Carson Daly - that made Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera stars.

After the band found minor success with an absurd but ear-grabbing cover of George Michael's "Faith'' on its 1997 debut, "Three Dollar Bill, Y'all,'' its 1999 sophomore album, "Significant Other,'' took everyone by surprise. It sold 635,000 in its first week and spawned Neanderthal anthems such as "Nookie'' and "Break Stuff.'' Though bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, and Rage Against the Machine had been mixing rap and rock for years, Limp Bizkit came along as if holding Metallica in one hand and the Wu-Tang Clan in the other, even if it was nowhere near as interesting as either group.

It didn't matter that Durst could neither rap nor sing, as he stumbled upon something far more potent: the unfocused, scattershot rage of youthful Abercrombie & Fitch shoppers. For every teenage boy and young man who felt put upon by parents, teachers, or girlfriends, here was the smirky Durst as spokesman and deliverer.

In T-shirts, shorts long enough to be culottes, and trademark red Yankees cap, Durst dressed the part, and he warbled male discontent with all the subtlety of a colicky crack baby. His specialties are pity-party mantras in which he whines about being misunderstood, at least when he isn't threatening to break someone's face.

From album to album, the formula never varied, but now it seems that his once-devoted fan base has turned its angry eyes elsewhere.

Maybe that's why Wes Borland, the band's former guitarist, split last year. Always the most interesting member of the group (which now includes bassist Sam Rivers, drummer John Otto, turntablist DJ Lethal, and new guitarist Mike Smith), Borland left claiming he "couldn't completely stand behind'' the band. If the dreadful "Results May Vary'' is any indication, Borland also packed up the group's best musical ideas along with the death-mask makeup and black shrouds he favored onstage.

Of course, don't expect Durst to suffer this new public attention deficit quietly. He'll do anything to keep his name current, whether it's claiming a fling with Britney or implying that he's up to something naughty with the newly separated Halle Berry, who appears in limpbizkit's video for "Behind Blue Eyes.'' (Yes, he totally botches the Who classic.) Durst clearly needs the spotlight more than it needs him, though that light grows ever dimmer.

On the introduction to "Significant Other,'' a deep, electronic voice intones, "You wanted the worst, you got the worst - the one, the only Limp Bizkit.'' If that was Durst's snarky inside joke four years ago, the joke isn't funny anymore. Now, it seems, even its fans no longer want anything to do with limpbizkit - the one, the only, and most certainly, the worst.

Renee Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column appears on Tuesdays. She can be reached at rgraham@globe.com.