There have been album launch events on the Playboy Mansion, promo movies shot on high of The World Commerce Middle, and Mission: Inconceivable theme songs. Nevertheless it couldn’t final. Limp Bizkit – and Fred specifically – grew to become the whipping boys for a scene deemed obnoxious, misogynistic and artistically bereft. Guitarist Wes Borland give up in 2001, executed with the circus that surrounded the band.
Their fourth file, 2003’s critically mauled Outcomes Might Range , was a relative industrial flop. At a gig supporting Metallica in Chicago in 2003, Fred was heckled offstage by a hostile viewers after simply six songs. They reunited with Wes for 2005’s The Unquestionable Fact (Half 1) EP, however their glory days appeared to be behind them.
That makes their present turnaround outstanding. Whereas resurgent curiosity in nu steel, and the nostalgia that comes with it, has undoubtedly performed an element, that doesn’t totally account for the zeal from followers who weren’t round for them first time round. In 2023, Fred appeared on the Membership Random podcast, hosted by veteran comic and TV presenter Invoice Maher.
“Lately, each night time I’ll say, ‘How many individuals is it your first time seeing Limp Bizkit?’ The entire place raises their hand,” the singer instructed Invoice. “‘How many individuals are beneath 30 years outdated?’ The entire place raises their hand… It’s younger people who find themselves reacting to the fabric.”
For Spookz, frontman with masked nu steel revivalists and former Limp Bizkit assist act Blackgold, it’s a matter of timing.
“It’s a generational factor,” he tells Hammer . “The hole is the proper quantity now for the youngsters simply moving into music for his or her mother and father to be like, ‘After I was younger, these guys have been sick’, and put them on within the automobile.”
Ross Robinson, the legendary, game-changing producer who labored with the band on Three Greenback Invoice, Y’All , has an easier clarification.
“The rationale they’re so fashionable once more at present is the explanation they blew up within the first place: as a result of they’re fucking unimaginable,” he says. “They’re a freaking cocktail of pure fireplace and creativity.”
The resurrection of Limp Bizkit has been a decade within the making. The band reunited in 2009 following a three-year hiatus, taking part in a blinder of a set at that yr’s Obtain pageant in entrance of a rabid crowd chanting their title. 2011’s comeback album, Gold Cobra , might need been clunky and forgettable, however their standing as a dwell draw continued to construct, particularly in Europe, the place they grew to become semi-regular pageant fixtures.
A much-trumpeted sixth album, Stampede Of The Disco Elephants , was continuously delayed, however that didn’t matter. Limp Bizkit had nicely and really come again in from the chilly, cracking open the door for the return of nu steel within the course of.
The Durstnaissance was rubber-stamped in 2021 with the discharge of Dad Vibes , their first new music in seven years. It discovered Fred totally leaning into the music’s title: dishevelled t-shirts and baseball caps have been out, changed by center age-appropriate gray slacks, gray wig and handlebar moustache, pink aviator shades, and, at one gig in Tampa, Florida in 2022, a comfortable chair in the course of the stage.
This was a funnier, extra self-aware Fred Durst, one prepared to embrace his age and standing as a nu steel dad with solely the barest whiff of irony. “It’s so Limp Bizkit to have a music about being a cool dad, however that’s one thing that solely Fred would consider,” says Zakk Cervini, who produced Dad Vibes and guardian album Nonetheless Sucks Stampede Of The Disco Elephants .
“Bands I work with that have been younger 10 years in the past are all having youngsters now. [Rage Against The Machine guitarist] Tom Morello was like, ‘Oh, you produced Dad Vibes ? I do a radio present, and each Father’s Day we play that music, that’s considered one of my favorite songs.’”
Launched on Halloween 2021 with little advance fanfare, the 12-song, 32-minute Nonetheless Sucks might not have had the gross sales or widespread cultural impression of Important Different or Chocolate Starfish And The Scorching Canine Flavored Water , however old- and newschool Bizkit followers lapped it up.
Since then, the love for the band has solely intensified. Limp Bizkit’s triumphant look at 2024’s Obtain pageant was extensively held up as the very best of the weekend, whereas celeb fan Ed Sheeran joined the band onstage eventually yr’s Pinkpop pageant for a duet on their cowl of The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes (a collab Fred dubbed ‘Fred Sheeran’ on Instagram).
It’s not simply old-school followers and early-2000s nostalgists who’re behind this resurgence in curiosity. Gen Z has latched onto the sound and aesthetics of nu steel, with TikTok and social media permitting youthful followers to take pleasure in Bizkit with out the bags and bias that clung to them within the early 2000s. Zakk Cervini attracts parallels between the band and present pop superstars.
“After I have a look at artists like Charli XCX or Billie Eilish, their aesthetics are dishevelled pants and brilliant inexperienced,” he says. “It’s so vibrant and outlandish. It’s meant to be a celebration.”
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
The Fred Durst of the 2020s is a world away from the Fred Durst of the late Nineties and early 2000s. Again then, sporting an ever-present pink baseball cap, he was one of many primary causes Limp Bizkit have been held in contempt in sure quarters. Whether or not it was his obnoxious swagger – embodied by the band’s notorious look on the Woodstock ’99 pageant – or the spats he discovered himself embroiled in with everybody from Eminem to Corey Taylor (Fred described Slipknot followers as “a bunch of fats, ugly youngsters”), for a lot of he encapsulated the worst features of nu steel.
He’s since insisted that his obnoxious persona was a personality that bought out of hand. He subsequently spoke of being bullied in his youth, and that Limp Bizkit have been his likelihood to launch that residual aggression and frustration.
“After I grew to become that Tyler Durden man, there have been simply no guidelines,” he instructed Steel Hammer in 2014, referencing Brad Pitt’s provocative character within the 1999 movie Combat Membership . “I used to be carrying this large particular person behind me on a series…. I can’t get away from it and that persona ate me up.”
Lately, Fred cuts a really totally different character. Onstage, he’s filled with smiles and grateful thanks. It seems like he’s extra more likely to make you a cuppa and a biscuit than begin a riot or shit-talk the competitors.
“I feel the journey of going up and down and up and down makes any artist humble, and he’s bought such humble swag when he’s onstage,” says Blackgold’s Spookz. “He makes you are feeling such as you’re together with your greatest mate. He’s so grateful that it’s come again round.”
This humility extends to giving a hand-up to a brand new era of bands. In addition to Blackgold, Limp Bizkit have taken metalcore crew Dying Want, rave-metal provocateurs Wargasm and hardcore newcomers Scowl out on tour with them. In lots of circumstances, he handpicks the band, contacting them immediately himself.
“He noticed us on TikTok and ended up in our DMs,” says Spookz. “If he hears a brand new band and he thinks they’re sick, he’s like, ‘I’m going to take you on tour, I’m going that will help you.’ Take nothing for it. No cause. That’s simply what he’s like.”
Fred Durst’s public picture isn’t the one factor that has been misunderstood through the years. In accordance with each Ross Robinson and Zakk Cervini, his artistic expertise have been neglected and underappreciated.
“We put collectively 9 songs from scratch in seven days at pre-production for the primary file,” recollects Ross of engaged on Three Greenback Invoice, Y’All . “I’ve by no means skilled that degree of creativity my entire profession. Concept after concept after concept, they usually have been all actually good.”
Zakk says that was the case on Nonetheless Sucks too. The producer describes his time working with the band as a collection of “lightning in a bottle” moments. “Fred is likely one of the most proficient folks that I’ve ever met in my total life. His voice is simply so iconic and so signature. With plenty of artists, it’s important to work to make them sound the way in which they sound, however Fred jumps on the mic and it robotically sounds sick.”
Recording the album’s opening monitor, Out Of Fashion , was a working example. “Fred was like, ‘All proper, I bought my lyrics. I’m going to put it down,’” says Zakk. “He recorded your entire music staring me within the face with the mic a foot away from me. It was this loopy hour of him in my face, screaming at me.”
It helps that the instability that has plagued the band has calmed down in recent times. Wes Borland has give up the band on two separate events, returning each instances, whereas DJ Deadly and bassist Sam Rivers have each left and returned to the band since 2012. The present line-up – additionally the band’s traditional line-up – has been collectively since 2019.
“Fred is there for his dudes ’til dying,” says Ross Robinson. That renewed sense of camaraderie is palpable on Nonetheless Sucks .
“I keep in mind Fred bouncing concepts off of Sam forwards and backwards being similar to, ‘Do you want this? Am I going too far on this? Is that this good?’” says Zakk. “Sam would hold everyone grounded. Then Deadly would simply are available with all his sounds and all his turntables they usually’re like, ‘Does it sound too dated?’ To me, that sounds recent. For thus many individuals of my era, that’s a brand new factor for them.”
For Ross Robinson, Limp Bizkit’s present reputation isn’t any shock. All of it goes again to the music. “It’s the beat, sense of music and choruses,” he says. “I wish to say, ‘After we go within the studio, we’re going to construct a fucking pyramid – one thing that lasts without end.’ I knew the primary Limp Bizkit file was going to do one thing after I put the primary CD I bought from mastering in my Toyota 4Runner. I pinned it huge open, sliding round corners, catching a bit air, simply within the filth doing donuts with the music, full blast, and it matched completely. I get chills even at present after I hear it.”
The joy that surrounded Limp Bizkit might have come and gone through the years, however the present love for them is akin to that of the unique nu steel period. Their ongoing (and self-deprecatingly titled) Loserville tour hits the UK and Eire in March, whereas they’re reportedly again within the studio recording the follow-up to Nonetheless Sucks .
The nu steel revival reveals no signal of abating both. With 90s contemporaries Korn set to headline this yr’s Obtain pageant, it’s not unthinkable that Limp Bizkit may do the identical in 2026. It’s not clear how shocked Fred is by the success of his band’s second act. By the mid-2000s, it seemed like they have been over and executed, a hangover of the nu steel years.
Twenty years on, they’ve clawed their manner again to the highest towards all the chances. However then possibly this was all a part of Fred Durst’s plan.
“I wished to drag again and see what our music may do by way of a loud world,” mentioned Fred in 2023. “How do you rise above the noise? And fortuitously, I’m so grateful, there’s a resurgence and it’s taking place.”
Limp Bizkit’s Loserville tour continues in Birmingham on March 13. Limp Bizkit play Studying and Leeds Festivals in August.
