In the wake of their massive Download set and increased popularity online, Wes Borland has said Limp Bizkit are “the biggest we’ve ever been right now”.
The band recently headlined Download Festival for the first time, 23 years after they were first meant to. The nu-metal group have a long history with the Donington Park festival, and sub-headlined the last day of 2024’s edition, with Kerrang! suggesting that their set ultimately drew a bigger crowd than that year’s actual headliners, Avenged Sevenfold.
Having now topped the bill, Borland recently sat down with the Gear4musicguitars channel to discuss their growing popularity, which the interviewer compared to KoRn‘s success with the social media generation – which earlier this year ‘Freak On A Leash’ go viral on TikTok thanks to a dance trend involving Zara Larsson.
“We’re the biggest we’ve ever been right now [as well],” he agreed. “It’s crazy. And I’m not saying that in a cocky way. I’m saying that, like, we can’t believe it.
“It’s just been — we’re so lucky. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I think people… We just get along so well now, and everybody, we’re adults, and we’re still having fun doing it, and I think that translates to the audience.”
When asked how the songwriting process typically worked for the band, Borland said frontman Fred Durst usually came into the studio with ideas they could riff off.
“We’ve been so busy lately that when we’ve gone into the studio, which we have a few times over the last couple years, but the resurgence in our schedule has just been amazing.
“I don’t know whether it’s TikTok or nostalgia or what it is, but we’ve been busy, busy, busy. But usually in the past, when we’ve made a record, I go do lots of riff writing and then bring it in, and then we start building songs off of that. Or Fred will work on song ideas at home, and then we’ll build off of that.
“And then sometimes we just start improvising. Or he’ll go, ‘Write the best thing you’ve ever written right now, on the spot.’ But some of that stuff happens. I mean, I think ‘Break Stuff’ happened that way.”
As several outlets noted last year, they saw a spike in streaming numbers in the wake of the death of bass player Sam Rivers as fans revisited their catalogue, and last year, their era-defining classic ‘Break Stuff’ hit Number One on the Billboard Hard Rock Songs Chart – 25 years after it was released as a single.
In a recent interview with Consequence, Borland also opened up about how he still felt “very emotional” about the loss of Rivers, and said that he struggles to speak about it still.
“He was like family,” he explained. “I’m gonna try not to cry. It’s just like we lost a piece of our DNA… It’s too hard to talk about right now in depth.”
He continued: “He can’t ever be replaced. We’re so lucky for Richie… he’s such a great player, and he’s just a wonderful guy, and we’re gonna hold onto him for as long as we can.
“[But] Sam is not a replaceable person. He was the heartbeat. It’s very emotional talking about it. I think that last year when it happened, we were all kind of in shock, and now we’re all grieving.”
The band are performing various festival slots across Europe this summer, with appearances including slots at festivals including Louder Than Life and Aftershock. Tickets to their upcoming shows are available here.
Their last new music dropped last September, when they released the standalone single ‘Making Love To Morgan Wallen’ as the first new music since their last album, 2021’s ‘Still Sucks‘.