Despite the underachievement of their previous record, 1993's
Give a Monkey a Brain, the defection of two founding members (guitarist Kendall Jones and keyboardist Chris Dowd), and the discarding from their longtime label Columbia,
Fishbone stuck it out. Signing with Arista subsidiary Rowdy Records, the now 5-piece band issued
Chim Chim's Badass Revenge in 1996. Unfortunately, the album only furthered
Fishbone's downward slide. One bright spot was that the sound wasn't as metallic as its predecessor was -- it brings to mind the band's earlier albums. The songwriting is still not up to snuff, however, evidenced on such predictable and sophomoric songs as "Beergut" and especially "In the Cube" (sample lyric: "Deep in the toilet, Doo deep doo"). Although the band was included on the Warped tour around the time of the album's release,
Chim Chim's Badass Revenge suffered the same cruel commercial fate as its predecessor. And repeating the conclusion of their previous tour, another longtime bandmember would leave (drummer
Fish), and
Fishbone would leave their record company once again. ~ Greg Prato