Gym Class Heroes - As Cruel As School Children

Let's hope the Gym Class Heroes are better at dodgeball then they are at making records. If their latest release, As Cruel As School Children, is any indication, they're going to need a fresh set of career skills to fall back on in the near future. As Cruel As School Children is a gruesome combination of two parts MySpace and one part Kevin Federline. The lyrics are juvenile. The beats are lame. It might actually be more fun to stab yourself in the eye with a letter opener than to listen to the whole thing from cover to cover. But those of you brave enough to give it a spin will discover a delightfully miserable collection of hip-hop ditties inspired by social networking sites, teenage sexual escapades and high-school drama. And they certainly aren’t bashful about how good they think they are. On the sublime stinker, “New Friend Request,” they boast: "Love it or leave it but you gotta admit on the scale of one to awesome, I'm the shit. Just get over it." Whoa…that’s a pretty loud statement. But the best part about it is that they’re not kidding. To borrow a phrase from the same song, this is “not an LOL matter.” Miraculously, this song ended up on the “Snakes On A Plane” soundtrack. Go figure. Oh--and let’s not forget the three “Sloppy Love” jingles inserted at random points throughout the record where lead “vocalist” Travis McCoy busts out a little bit of spoken word poetry inspired by his unabashed horniness. The grand finale is an ode to him waking up after a ridiculous bender to discover that he had sex with a regretful partner the night before. Maybe if we cross our fingers McCoy and his cronies will soon wake up from their brief fliration with commercial success to find their musical careers in the toilet. But that’s just, like, my opinion. Or maybe I should say, “IMHO?” [www.gymclassheroes.com]