Limp Bizkit were everywhere in the early 00s. Like, everywhere. Performing on Top Of The Pops. Bagging number one albums and singles. Soundtracking Wrestlemanias. You could barely move for Fred Durst bouncing around your television screen from around 2000-2003. While Bizkit were already a major deal come the end of the 90s, the obscene success of Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavoured Water - which sold, wait for it, a million copies in its first week - not only helped confirm nu metal as the biggest thing in music (Hybrid Theory landing just a week later certainly helped), but installed Jacksonville's finest as its proud, obnoxious poster boys.
These days, it often feels like we have to rely on Eurovision and, um, Doja Cat to get metal represented on the big stage, but in that era, rock really was dominating the mainstream. The singles charts were stacked with heavy bands (seriously, head over to the Official Charts Company site and look up any given week from 2001), nu metal fashion had become a pop culture phenomenon and even Staind somehow got a number one album in the UK. Staind!
