What is it?

Jackson Guitars has been on a bit of a spree of signature models over the past year or so, with a bunch of guitars from some very big names in the metal guitar game. The Lee Malia Jackson released last year was huge, and in 2026 we’ve Brandon Ellis’ crazy 27-fret Kelly, the recently reviewed Jackson Pro Plus Christian Andreu Rhoads, and the guitar we’re looking at today, the Jackson Pro Series Signature Wes Borland King V.

Wes Borland first discovered Jackson V guitars while recording The Unquestionable Truth in 2004. He was given a 1981 Jackson Rhoads from producer Ross Robinson, which kick-started a love affair with this sort of instrument. We can trace the roots of his signature model back to 2013, when he came across a faulty, left-handed King V, which he converted to play right-handed and became one of his most played guitars on tour.

For an artist who wears some of the most elaborate on-stage outfits I’ve ever seen, his signature model is a decidedly Spartan affair. That’s by design, though. Borland said himself that “live, it just needs to be as bulletproof as possible.” That means a through-body maple neck with graphite reinforcement, and a nyatoh body painted gloss black with white bevels.

The reverse headstock, with an upside-down Jackson logo just like Wes’ original guitar, is attached via a scarf joint. The neck features an ebony fretboard with 24 jumbo frets and a compound radius that moves from 12 to 16 inches. A white binding goes all the way around, on which Luminlay side dots are placed.

It’s got a single Seymour Duncan Invader humbucker, with just a single volume control, which continues that theme of simplicity. The Floyd Rose 1500 Series locking tremolo is recessed into the body, with a matching locking nut at the top of the neck. Locking strap pins are included in the Jackson gig bag, which completes the breakdown of this fairly simple instrument.

Specs

• Launch price: $1,299.99 | £1,099 | €1,299
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Nyatoh
• Neck: Maple / Modern C
• Fingerboard: Ebony
• Scale length: 25.5" (648 mm)
• Nut/width: Floyd Rose 1500 Series Locking, 1.6875" (42.86 mm)
• Frets: 24, jumbo
• Hardware: Jackson sealed die-cast tuners, Floyd Rose® 1500 Series double-locking tremolo
• String spacing at bridge: 54mm
• Electrics: 1x Seymour Duncan Invader SH8, master volume
• Weight: 7.27 lbs / 3.3kg
• Left-handed options: N/A
• Finishes: Black with white bevels
• Cases: Jackson gig bag
• Contact: Jackson

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

The Wes Borland King V comes in a generously proportioned soft-shell gig bag, and pulling it out, it feels pretty heavy, but a trip to the scales reveals a weight of just 3.3kg. It’s a long guitar, though, and the weight is distributed weirdly due to the shape, which makes it feel a lot more hefty than the kilograms show on the scale.

Performing a close inspection of the guitar, the paint is very nicely applied for the most part. I spot a few minuscule wobbles where the gloss black meets the white bevel, and there’s a slight detour for the white binding near the Floyd Rose locking nut. These are only really visible with my nose against the guitar, and certainly don’t detract from the overall look of it.

A bit more noticeable are the upside-down pearloid shark fin inlays, some of which look distinctly more yellow than the others. This isn’t so visible looking at the guitar head-on, but I certainly notice it when sitting with the guitar in my lap. There’s also a fleck of black caught in the inlay of the one marking the third fret. Again, these aren’t huge flaws, but with the price of the guitar, I’d expect a little better.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Sitting down to play the Wes Borland V, it’s well out of tune, so I have to unlock the nut and play a bit of see-saw, getting the guitar close to perfect tuning while keeping the bridge flat. It’s not ideal, but it’s a necessary evil of locking tremolos. The bridge ends up ever so slightly unparallel to the body, but I’ll have to make do with the time allotted. As a natural aside to the guitar’s shape and aforementioned weight distribution, playing sitting down isn’t really an option, even with a guitar strap on it, so I decide to stand instead.

With these hurdles jumped, my initial play reveals that the neck is really nicely done, with a smooth feel across the bound edges and jumbo frets. Jackson doesn’t list the profile of the neck, but it feels ‘D’-shaped to my hand and more in line with the guitar acrobatics of shred guitars than the more experimental nature of Borland’s own playing.

The large size of the frets offers an excellent playing platform, whether I’m churning power chords with a slight bend a la Break Stuff, nailing the chorus riff from Stuck, or laying into the locking tremolo with the main motif from Hot Dog. Wes’ own playing might not be the most technically demanding in terms of pure chops, but his guitar certainly holds up to the less usual demands he makes of his instruments.

Naturally, there’s a bit of a shift in the tuning when I do things like pushing the bar to the body of the guitar or trying some Dimebag harmonic screams. Still, it puts up with extreme use very well, with only cursory retuning via the mini tuners of the Floyd Rose necessary. For your day-to-day flutters and smaller dives, the tremolo holds without having to retune any more than I usually would with a locking system.

Getting into some more traditional playing, it’s easy to fly around the fretboard with some legato licks, and it’s definitely got plenty of that Jackson shred DNA. Bending against the jumbo frets feels lovely; there’s no scratchiness here, and alternate-picked scale runs and three-note-per-string legato licks are easily achieved. It could be better, though. The factory setup is a pretty high at 2mm clearance from the low E string on the 12th fret when I press down at the 1st. That said, it’s already lightning quick as it is, so things can only get faster with a good setup.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Interestingly, this guitar comes tuned in standard, presumably to make it more accessible. Wes himself uses C# standard on a lot of his songs, drop-B on others, and, of course, his weird intervals on that unique four-string guitar. Thankfully, I have an excellent pitch shifter available via my Neural DSP plugin collection, so I can play the songs as they should be.

The Seymour Duncan Invader is, as expected, a perfect match for high gain. Playing through the Gojira plugin with the amp sim based on the blue channel of the 5150 engaged, it’s incredibly articulate when I chug powerchords. The low end is controlled, the midrange punchy, and there’a lovely smooth sound to the high end. It’s an awesome-sounding pickup. Adding in a helping of reverb and delay, leads hit with plenty of cut and bags of sustain, although it’s not quite as compressed and never-ending as what you’d get from an active humbucker.

It’s interesting because I initially thought I’d find it limiting, but the organic nature of a passive pickup makes it much more versatile than an active equivalent, as I found with the Jackson Christian Andreu model I reviewed recently. Changing to a Fender-inspired amp model, it’s surprising how nice the cleans can get once I roll back the volume knob significantly to stop it hitting the front of the amp so hard. I do lose a bit of high-end due to the lack of a treble bleed circuit, but with the cutting nature of the high-output humbucker, it ends up being a net positive.

To try and keep some of the high end, I trim the input of my audio interface so that I can utilize the humbucker with the volume knob fully turned. Wes himself uses a Roland JC-120 for his cleans, a guitar amp which is known for its very high clean headroom. With the right gain staging, it means this guitar can deliver ambient and experimental cleans just as well as the heavy riffs.

This isn’t that surprising considering that moving from a heavily effected clean tone to a chunky riffing sound is a signature of Wes’ own playing. Trying some more measured stuff like arpeggiated chords and triads higher up the neck, I'm surprised at how organic the humbucker sounds despite the high output, with a lovely clarity and great note separation.

Verdict

Jackson is really on a roll with their signature guitars at the moment, and the Jackson Wes Borland King V is another success in my opinion. It’s well put together, can handle pretty much any playing style, and despite its simple layout, it’s deceptively versatile. I can see it finding fans beyond just those who worship at the temple of Wes.

I prefer the more organic feel and tone of a passive pickup here, so if you like that super controlled metal tone you get with an active pickup, this might not be the guitar for you. There were also a couple of occasions where I found myself wishing for a neck pickup, but for the most part, the single Seymour Duncan offers plenty of versatility for a variety of guitar tones.

Make no mistake, though, this is a guitar for live playing. V-shaped guitars are, at best, inconvenient for playing sat down at home, and this one is no different. The awkward weight distribution and shape make it cumbersome to wield in tight spaces, but there’s no denying that it feels and looks great when played standing up on a guitar strap.

Guitar World verdict: For anyone who knows their chocolate starfish from their hot dog flavored water, there aren’t all that many surprises with the Jackson Pro Series Signature Wes Borland King V. It can handle the heavy stuff just as well as clean tones, and it’s capable of plenty of guitar acrobatics via the locking tremolo. Putting aside the maladroit nature of V-shaped guitars, this is a riffing machine that can be used equally well for metal guitar playing or the more experimental tones Borland is famous for.

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Hands-on videos

Jackson

Dagan Wilkin

Ninecore Neil

Jackson’s all-new signature guitar for Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland is finally here, and it’s a recreation of his iconic King V that began life as a factory floor reject.

Built on a foundation of Borland’s “boundary-pushing approach to performance and tone” and promising “uncompromising power and raw sonic intensity”, the Pro Series Signature Wes Borland King V has been a long time coming.

Borland's affection for weird and wonderful guitars is well-known. Some of his past hits include a custom four-string guitar-bass hybrid from PRS, and the model that inspired this new signature – which started out as a left-handed factory reject.

Borland recalled the guitar's origin in a 2013 interview with Total Guitar, recalling how he stumbled across the oddball V while perusing a range of faulty builds. After coming across an unwanted southpaw model, he converted it to a right-handed configuration, and it became one of his Number One instruments.

So, yes, this new signature is a left-handed V flipped the other way around – exactly like Borland's original – and the Jackson logo on its pointed headstock remains upside down in honor of that.

Other key features include Seymour Duncan Invader SH8 humbuckers to deliver high-output tones and “razor-sharp clarity,” and a recessed Floyd Rose 1500 Series bridge, which can handle screaming dive bombs until the cows come home. The volume knob has also been kept well out of the way.

Built with a neck-through construction, which in turn gets graphite reinforcement, it can withstand whatever insanity Borland puts it through.

“It’s taking me a long time to figure out what I need as a guitar player,” Borland confesses. And who knew a simple error would lead him to such a unique trademark six-string.

“For me, you just need volume, pickups, a locking tremolo system, and 24 frets, that’s it,” he adds. “Live, it just needs to be as bulletproof as possible. I’ve come to realize that the more streamlined our guitars are, the fewer problems we have on stage.

“Jackson is fun, the over-the-top, shred-a-copter shapes, and my outrageous stage costumes pushing the boundaries, this fits in more with that. It’s fricking crazy; it’s about time!”

It was while recording Bizkit’s trash-tinged record, The Unquestionable Truth, in 2004, that Borland got his first Jackson, grabbing a used Rhoads V from a local guitar shop. That became “a big part of the album”, before producer Ross Robinson gave him his 1981 Jackson Rhoads, and his love affair with Jackson Vs has remained red-hot since.

“Wes Borland is unlike anyone else in nu-metal,” says Peter Wichers, Product Development Manager at Jackson Guitars. “Being involved in the development of his Signature King V has been an incredibly cool project, and I think that shows in every inch of this guitar.”

The Jackson Pro Series Signature Wes Borland King V KV is available now for $1,299.99 / £1,199 / €1,399.

See Jackson for more.

For those chasing every inch of Borland’s sound, the guitar will pair well with his signature STL plugin suite.

It's been two decades since nu-metal, the curious spawn of rap and rock that dominated the airwaves for approximately eight years after 1996, sank to the ground and expired, defeated by the new wave of garage and alternative bands that emerged after the millennium.

For those of us old enough to recall the heady days when every rock band had a DJ and generously-proportioned trousers, the music made by all nu-metal bands outside the biggest few has become rapidly dated.

The only bands from the scene still operating at any significant level of success are Slipknot, the resurgent Linkin Park, and Deftones – who survived because they evolved away from the original mallrat sound – and Limp Bizkit, who regularly played the world's biggest stages despite being relatively long in the tooth, musically speaking.

One reason for Bizkit's continued presence was late bassist Sam Rivers, a performer and songwriter whose contributions to the band's catalogue helped to keep them going years after their contemporaries bit the dust.

Take their song Rearranged, for example, which features a chordal bass riff that introduces and carries the whole tune: a subtle, unforgettably catchy line, it stands in stark contrast to the usual heavy metal bass cliches, and indeed to the sweary fury of the album, 1999's Significant Other, on which it appears.

“We were at a soundcheck and Wes came up with this little tapped figure on the guitar,” said Rivers in the January 2014 issue of Bass Guitar Magazine. “We started jamming to it and that bassline was the first thing that came out of my head. There's sixteenth notes going on all through that line, but by the end of the soundcheck we had the whole song down.

“It can be awkward when you're playing like that, because you can't hear everything very well, but sometimes special things come out of that situation.”

Rivers’ musical relationship with guitarist Wes Borland, himself a maverick of the highest order, lies at the heart of his basslines.

“If Wes comes up with a monster riff, which he usually does, I ask myself, ‘Do I have room to move around it, or shall I just lay in the pocket and sit back with the drums?’ Sometimes locking in with the kick drum is enough. There's usually space to do something melodic in the bridge or somewhere like that.

“It's all about finding the balance, because at the end of the day it's really all about the song, not about anything else.”

Born in 1977, Rivers started his path towards mega-stadiums bright and early. “I started playing guitar when I was 13 or 14 years old. After a while, me and my friend got together and we didn't have a bass player, and he got better than I was at guitar, so I went to bass guitar.”

“I caught on pretty quick because I'd already taught myself guitar, so it was all about transitioning between chords to root notes and learning the things you need as a bass player.”

Hitting his mid-teens as grunge peaked, Rivers took his main inspiration from Seattle. “Jeff Ament from Pearl Jam is definitely my biggest influence. Les Claypool as well, and I always liked Justin Chancellor from Tool. They were the main ones. I also listened to guitar players as well. You've got to be able to play with other musicians, after all, so it's a good idea to study guitars.”

The funk also appealed to Rivers like it does to all of us, and indeed Limp Bizkit have a groovy edge in many of their songs, but you would never find him embarking on a slapathon.

“With Bizkit I've slapped a little bit over the years, but not traditional funk style. I’ve just used it to incorporate certain things. I can still hang, but some of the stuff these guys are doing blows my mind. I could never spend that much time on learning that. That whole raking thing, where you use multiple fingers: I've studied it, but I just look at it and think ‘No!’”

Gear-wise, Rivers was a keen user of a certain German brand. “I play Warwick Stage One Streamers, and they're all old, made between 2000 and 2004. The only thing I do to the Streamers that is different is I put Bassline soapbar pickups in them. Apart from that, everything is strictly off the shelf.

“I also have an old ’70s P-Bass, and two vintage Wals. I love Wal! They are a great-sounding bass. I've also got a couple of Spectors, which I love, and besides those I have a couple of Hamer 12-strings, which I used on our song Hold On. That was all 12-string bass, although I can't play it live because it hurts my fingers so bad!”

After years of a dry tone, Rivers began expanding his sonic palette even further. “For a long time I never played with effects, but then I added an overdrive pedal and blended it with my dry signal, so you get a little bit of grit on it. I'm also using the Cry Baby Bass Wah, the one where you don't have to step on a pedal to ignite it. I like to use it as a filter too, so it slowly builds in.

“I'm also really in love with Black Cat pedals, and one of my main focuses is Prescription Electronics Depth Charge Bass Fuzz. That has a blend on it as well, and it sounds amazing on bass.”

Live, Limp Bizkit are an impressive force, helped along by the commercial level at which they operate. “Depending on the tour, I like to have at least five basses with me, but if we're overseas and there's a budget to think about, I'll go with three or four. We play in C#, and then we drop that to B, so I'll have one of each.”

“I love playing four- and five-strings, but when I play a six-string I start turning into a guitar player because of the extra high string. I like fretless and upright too, and I have those as well. It's just a case of finding which bass frequencies work best, especially as we have a DJ in the band as well as a drummer.”

Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst has paid tribute to the band's late bassist, Sam Rivers, in an emotional social post, recounting how the pair met and recalling how Rivers was paramount to the formation of the nu-metal heavyweights.

Rivers passed away aged 48 over the weekend and tributes to the “pure magic” musician have since flooded in. With Limp Bizkit, Durst says Rivers could pull a “beautiful sadness” out of the bass guitar, believing him to be the most crucial ingredient in the band's genre-blurring success.

“Sam Rivers was such a truly gifted, unbelievably sweet and wonderful person,” Durst says in an emotional Instagram post.

He explains how Rivers became the vehicle for his vision of a band that mashed together hip-hop, punk, and heavy metal. After several “iterations of the idea,” he stumbled across Rivers in Jacksonville, Florida.

“I had this vision for this particular sound, and I just couldn't get it together right,” Durst says. “So I decided, ‘I'm going to go out and find the right players to do this’. I'd gone into this tiny bar where this band was playing called Pier Seven, and there Sam was on the stage with his band, killing it on the bass. I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy's amazing.’ I was blown away. He was playing a five-string bass, too. I'd never really seen someone use a five-string bass.

“In my mind, you had to start with the rhythm section,” the singer continues. “I saw Sam play, and he was so smooth; I could hear nothing else but Sam. Everything disappeared, besides his gift.

“I went up to Sam after the show, and I said, ‘Hey, man, you're unbelievable. I got this idea for this band I want to do...’ and I kind of threw it out there. He looked at me and he said, ‘Killer, I'm in. Let's do it.’ That's kind of how things started to come together.”

It was Rivers who suggested drummer John Otto, his cousin, for the band, given his jazz background.

“With John and Sam, it was a magical thing,” Durst adds. “I felt like, ‘This is it.’

“Sam had this thing about him, where anything I could spit out of my mouth, ‘Try this,’ he could do it, and do it 1,000 times better than I can hear it in my head.”

Rivers’ passing has come as a huge shock to many in the metal fanbase, and Durst has been left to reflect on the life he led.

“It's so tragic that he's not here right now, and I've gone through gallons and gallons of tears since yesterday,” he states. “He did it. He lived it.

“With Limp Bizkit, we've just been on such a journey. We've rocked stadiums together, been around the world together, shared so many moments, and I know that wherever he is right now, he's smiling like, ‘I did it’, and man, did he do it. What he's left behind is priceless.”

In 2000, Rivers was crowned Best Bassist at the Gibson Awards; the same year he was a cover star for Bass Player's October issue.

Sam Rivers, bass player for Limp Bizkit, has died, aged 48. The band confirmed the bass player's death in a statement on social media.

"Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat," they said. "Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.

"From the first note we ever played together, Sam brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced. His talent was effortless, his presence unforgettable, his heart enormous. He was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of human. A true legend of legends. And his spirit will live forever in every groove, every stage, every memory."

The cause of death has not been revealed.

Sam Rivers was a founding member of Limp Bizkit. He was born in September 1977, in Jacksonville, Florida, where he later formed the nu metal trailblazers with frontman Fred Durst.

He played on all of the band's studio albums – playing both guitar and bass on their 2003 album, Results May Vary – although he did have time out from the band between 2015-2018, as he battled liver disease, a result of chronic alcohol abuse.

In 2020, he revealed that his drinking had almost killed him: "The doctor said, 'If you don't stop, you're going to die,'" he told author Jon Wiederhorn for his book, Raising Hell. "I had really bad liver disease. I quit drinking and did everything the doctors told me.

"I fought liver disease for a couple years and it won. I had to get a liver transplant in 2017."

Rivers rejoined Limp Bizkit in 2018, and won Best Bassist at the Gibson Awards in 2000. In October that year, he was the cover star of Bass Player magazine.

Halloween might be a little over four months away, but that hasn’t stopped Wes Borland from getting into the spirit of things by cosplaying as James Hetfield while supporting Metallica on tour.

The Limp Bizkit electric guitar titan has been taking part in Metallica’s M72 world tour, and to celebrate the final stop of the current run, Borland donned a curly blonde wig as he comedically cosplayed as an ’80s-era James Hetfield.

It was an exemplary effort from Borland, who – along with ripped jeans, a classic Metallica tee, sweatbands around his wrists, and white high-top trainers – donned a white Jackson Kelly to troll Hetfield’s own iconic Explorer-style ESP

The Kelly – which tipped its hat to the metal guitar Hetfield frequently played throughout the 1980s – also has “EET PHO” scrawled on its body.

This is a nifty reference to Hetfield’s similarly-shaped 1987 ESP MX220, which has the charming words “EET FUK” written on it. However, a skull mask ensures that the ever-effervescent Borland still has some of his own flair in the look.

Speaking to Playboy in 2001, Hetfield had said, “Limp Bizkit seems a little cartoony to me”, and while that opinion may have changed 24 years on, Borland’s comical cosplay probably does compound that sentiment a little.

In related news, Borland, who released a signature Tonality plugin with STL Tones last year, has spoken about how his beloved Jackson King V guitar started life as a factory reject, but has since become so much more.

Gibson, meanwhile, recently sent Metallica fans into a frenzy in December when it teased a new signature run of Hetfield’s Explorer. Sadly, no such run is yet to materialize, as it turns out it was a special one-off build for Jason Mamoa.

Metallica's hard-working techs have also given an eye-opening insight into the gear needed for the tour. The band are currently touring with 64 guitars, and 36 need to be shred-ready at any given moment. They also go through a ridiculous 6,000 guitar picks each night. A whopping 800 locals are also employed to support the running of each show. And now 1x blonde wig can be added to the band's sizable itinerary.

Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland has long been known for his love of unconventional six-strings.

Well, we can't even really just say six-strings to be honest, because also been known to use a unique four-string baritone guitar, and he, a couple years back, developed a fascinating four-string guitar/bass hybrid with PRS.

Oddball PRS models aside, though, Borland has long been associated with Jacksons, with one of his favorites being a particular King V with a unique origin story.

In a video interview with Total Guitar in 2013, the nü-metal guitar hero explained that, rather than a top-of-the-line custom job involving the best of Jackson's best luthiers, his King V was actually a factory floor reject.

“My rep at Jackson had a couple of guitars that had factory flaws in them and had been returned, and he said, ‘There's a couple of King Vs that I think you'd be incredibly interested in,’” Borland explained.

Borland's Jackson rep went on to tell the guitarist that one of these had a reverse headstock. “But lo and behold,” Borland said, “when we opened the case it turned out to be a left-handed [King] V.”

Undeterred, Borland was “excited to take it on as a project and turn it into a [right-handed V].”

“I had to take a soldering iron and basically just burn new dot inlays into the side and replace the nut with a right-handed nut,” the Limp Bizkit guitarist recounted.

As for the headstock, not only is the Jackson logo upside down, the company's name, as Borland explains, is in a smaller font in order to fit the headstock properly.

Interestingly, given their long-standing relationship, Borland has never endorsed Jackson outright, nor PRS.

Star players opening up their relationships with guitar-makers to make room for multiple corporate partnerships is increasingly common nowadays, though Borland has never felt the need to make things official, so to speak.

“I played PRS through the Chocolate Starfish [and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water, Limp Bizkit's blockbuster 2000 album] era and I’ve started working with them again, as well as Jackson,” he told Guitar World in 2023. “ I’m not exclusive to either one.”

In a decade now best remembered for trends that suffocatingly enveloped one another, nu metal may well be the most infamous of them all. Filled with baggy-jeaned, backwards-hat-wearing types (hello, Fred Durst) who conjured the full gamut of emotions, from eternal sadness to hyper-illicit wrath, nu metal set the stage for a generation of angst-filled musical fans to groan, moan and sob along with.

Of course, 12 or 12,000 of you might be wondering aloud, “What is nu metal?” And to be honest, with all the shade that’s been thrown its way, combined with the fact that many of the bands labeled as such are so different… it’s a bit difficult to define. But if we were to try, we’d say: nu metal combines elements of heavy metal and hip-hop with syncopated layers, dense guitars and gloomy (but not really doomy) down-tuned guitars. 

Oh, and there are bits of grunge, funk and just about everything else mixed in there. And, for better or worse, we should mention the general aggression and anger that seems to run rampant through nu metal. Sounds fun, right?

The guttural music of the all-too-short nu metal era will forever be trapped in a vacuum of the ’90s, with those who lived through it being the genre’s willing (or unwilling) victims. Though it’s not always taken seriously, it’s also not to be taken lightly. What follows are 10 late-’90s nu metal albums worth a second listen. Or something like that.

10. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown – P.O.D. (1999)

Before Youth of a Nation came along after Y2K, Christian-meets-nu-metal outfit P.O.D.’s finest hour was 1999’s The Fundamental Elements of Southdown. With rage-filled yet altruistic visions relayed through platinum-selling hits like Southdown, it was easy to get down with Marcos Curiel’s chugging, atmospheric licks. 

Also of note: this record includes a trapped-in-time cover of U2’s Bullet the Blue Sky, which, if nothing else, is a curiosity worth hearing at least once.

9. Tonight the Stars Revolt! – Powerman 5000 (1999)

Fueled by guitar duo M.33 and Adam 12, Powerman 5000’s Tonight the Stars Revolt! was a weapon of mass destruction, yet brimming with suffocatingly sweet hooks. The group was unique if only for their apparent obsession with all things sci-fi en route to their biggest hit, When Words Collide.

8. Coal Chamber – Coal Chamber (1997)

Coal Chamber were early torchbearers for an impending nu metal scene, along with a few others. Released on the genre’s commercial peak precipice, 1997’s Coal Chamber obtained gold status, but the band has been mostly forgotten since.

Never a group to dazzle, instead, tracks such as Sway found the L.A. natives brandishing an uber-simplistic approach, as evidenced by Miguel Rascón’s rudimentary yet effective Telecaster-driven methods.

7.  Soulfly – Soulfly (1998)

Soulfly have been known to genre-hop over the years, but for their 1997 debut, the group shined with a period-correct approach steeped in nu metal splendor.

Jackson Bandeira and Max Cavalera trade guitar tricks throughout Soulfly, but most interesting about this record is the array of guest stars scattered throughout. What self-respecting nu metal aficionado wouldn’t love a roster featuring Dino Cazares, Chino Moreno and Fred Durst?

6. Dysfunction – Staind (1999)

Nu metal suffers from several disorders, the most unfortunate of which is that some (OK, many) people don’t take it entirely seriously. But that was never an issue for Springfield, Massachusetts act Staind.

With Mike Mushok handling the fretwork, Staind were musically sound, but what truly set them apart was Aaron Lewis’ stark lyrics, which covered just every grizzly subject one could imagine. Pair that with semi-deranged cover art and you’ve got a recipe for a nu metal-driven nightmare.

5. Around the Fur – Deftones (1997)

The members of Deftones – notably guitarist Stephen Carpenter – are evasive when asked about their foray into nu metal. They’ve stepped away from the genre for the most part, but in the late ’90s, few did it better, a trick on full display via 1997’s platinum-selling Around the Fur.

In truth, Deftones are often thought of as a cut above the rest of the field, and it’s with good reason, considering Carpenter’s ringing open strings, dissonant voicings and deafening use of power chords in his rhythms.

4. Slipknot – Slipknot (1999)

Widely considered one of the better metal albums of the past 25 years, it’s no surprise to see Slipknot’s 1999 self-titled effort still soaking up ink in rock’s back pages. Though classified as “nu metal,” Slipknot also indulged their desires for expansiveness, injecting healthy doses of death, thrash, industrial and speed metal into the nu metal mix. 

Purity and Frail Limb Nursery are remembered for issues pertaining to copyright infringement but are lasting just the same. Problems aside, Corey Taylor showed his mettle as a songsmith, and Mick Thomson, Jim Root and Josh Brainard’s attack on guitar was nothing short of seismic.

3. Devil Without a Cause – Kid Rock (1998)

You didn’t think we’d make it out of here without mentioning Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba, did you? And who could forget what would become a harbinger of country rap and cowboy metal, the indomitable Cowboy? 

Say what you will about Kid Rock’s value as a songwriter, Devil Without a Cause dominated radio waves and MTV alike in the late summer of 1998, en route to fame, fortune and, yes, infamy. Far from a guitarist’s delight, Kid Rock’s backing band, Twisted Brown Trucker (featuring Jason Krause and Kenny Olson) is, at the very least, a semi-memorable duo capable of crafting tidy riffs.

2. Significant Other – Limp Bizkit (1999)

Netflix’s 2022 documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 vividly reminded fans that Break Stuff was indeed the mantra for Limp Bizkit. Considering its rage-filled lyrical themes, which inspired the masses to tear plywood from the walls of outdoor concert venues and crowd surf to their destiny, yeah… you could say Significant Other was critical to the nu metal movement. And if we’re being honest, Wes Borland is one of the few actual guitar heroes in a genre that’s a bit lacking in said department.

1. Follow the Leader – Korn (1998)

It didn’t matter where you were; there was no escaping Korn’s 1998 magnum opus. The album was popular from the get-go on the strength of Freak on a Leash. And the accompanying Family Values Tour was a boon, carrying Korn to nine MTV Video Music Award nominations and one Grammy nod.

In retrospect, Jonathan Davis’ depressing yet at times awe-inspiring lyrics, bookended by Head and Munky’s effects-filled guitar heroics, made Follow the Leader a pillar of nu metal. In a genre defined by tortured souls and savage imagery, Korn gifted the masses with a record to yelp to at ear-splitting volumes. 

Gear Acquisition Syndrome – better known to us guitarists as G.A.S. – is something almost all of us suffer from, at least at some point in our lives. For many, it’s an ongoing battle, taking up every iota of inner-strength to resist the urge to try out everything in our local guitar shop or trawl secondhand websites like Reverb and eBay while the rest of the world sleeps, all in the hope of finding new tools to create with. In more extreme cases, it’s an addiction that needs to be constantly fed which can overtake all rationality and common sense. Make no mistake, G.A.S. can be dangerous.

It’s something Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland is no stranger to, and following last week’s announcement of a huge gear sale through auction site Analogr.com, calling from Munich just a few hours before his band hit the stage for the first night of their European tour, he touches on the huge sense of relief in waving goodbye to a lot of his unnecessary equipment… 

“My habit for buying gear had gotten out of control,” he tells Guitar World, almost as if it’s the start of a rehab meeting or recovery clinic. “Yeah, it’s nice to have a bunch of different things, but how else do you stop a bad habit? I’d been accumulating for so many years that my collection had gotten ridiculous. There were five storage spaces full of stuff that I just wasn’t using. And I’m only getting rid of 60 percent of what I have in storage, like the 27 guitars I just don’t play anymore… 

“My collection was so extensive that it kinda became a burden. It was almost like [reality television show] My 600-lb Life or something! I didn’t know how to lose the weight. It felt like so much work to get rid of all this stuff, which is where Analogr came along. They said, ‘We’ll take anything you don’t want and do all the work for you!’ And I was like, ‘Yes! I have a lot of stuff that I don’t need and want to clear out!’”

Parting with gear is never easy, but once he had the right kind of help onboard, Borland was able to easily deduce which items would be listed for sale. And he’s not done with buying gear, either – so, to some extent, he’s making space for future purchases…

“Arriving at the decision to sell this stuff wasn’t too hard,” he continues. “I simply had too much. It was a bit like if I wanted new things I’d have to get rid of other things, whatever it might be that I haven’t used or played in a year or two.

“There are loads of microphones I got when I was younger that were just sitting there. After all these years of recording and engineering, there’s been a huge learning experience about what works best for me. A lot of stuff I’d gotten when I was younger and more naïve so I wasn’t really using it, for example there was this all-encompassing Telefunken drum mic set that I didn’t like as much as other sets I own. But there were still a few things I felt connected to…”

Like the Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier used on Three Dollar Bill, Y’all – which you christened in pen as ‘The Pickled Paprika Lord Leviticus Amen’?

“Yeah! But that amp hadn’t been played in so long. I love that head but I mainly use Diezels and EVHs. I was keeping it purely for sentimental reasons, and it got to the point where it was just taking up space. Every time I moved I’d be like, ‘Ugh, I’ve got to collect it and move it from A to B!’ I was ready to lose the weight.

“I used to have eight Mesa/Boogie heads and still own a few of the cabs. Don’t get me wrong, I probably still have 15 or 16 cabinets in total, around nine EVH heads and two Diezels, plus a load of boutique amps. I’ve decided to only keep the stuff I really like. I’m also selling five Orange heads in this sale because there’s just too much stuff. And it’s nice for the people who want it to have it, rather than it just gathering dust.”

That Selmer Zodiac Twin Thirty, recommended to you by Rick Rubin, must have been one of the harder decisions in the sale, surely?

“Yeah, Rick persuaded me to get that one. And you’re right, that was actually one of the things I had a hard time deciding whether to part with. But I had to think, ‘What do I use this for?’ It was the clean amp for the Chocolate Starfish album, like the tones you hear on the breakdown in My Way where it gets really trebly, it’s the high treble button on that amp.

“I really like that Selmer but later on I got a vintage 1965 Magnatone that was the same model Buddy Holly used and I ended up liking the sound of that more. I had to ask myself, ‘Why do I need both?’ If I want a Selmer again, I’ll buy one again, but right now I need to slim down my life. 

“Another thing I’ve done over the years is think more about what I’m buying. I’ve always wanted a Wal bass like Geddy Lee and Justin [Chancellor] from Tool. My friend Danny Lohner has one too. But they’re too expensive. I can’t justify spending $10,000 on a bass, so what I’ll do is buy something cheaper and similar. That way it won’t sting as much! But I end up accumulating a lot of things that aren’t the thing. This sale is about getting rid of all that stuff. Things that are cool but I end up never playing.”

There’s also one of your Yamaha CV820WB signatures, which were partly inspired by the Starcasters famously used by the likes of Jonny Greenwood and Martin Gore…

“I had several of those Yamahas. This is the second one they made me, but I’m keeping the first. I really like that one, and there’s a white version that I ended up smashing to bits at a show in St. Petersburg, but I glued the body back together and poured resin in it because it’s a semi-hollow, just to strengthen it. I also ended up putting some circuit-bent stuff in there, so that’s a special guitar to me. It looked cooler pieced back together than it did before. So I’m keeping two of them, but losing the one I play the least.”

And there’s a real Starcaster in there too, which looks heavily modded…

“Yeah, I’ve fucked around with that one. It’s one of the Chinese reissue Starcasters. There’s a Lollar pickup in the bridge. I put a Mastery bridge and tremolo system in there, and fitted a Jaguar pickup behind the bridge which has its own volume. I really fucked around with that guitar. It’s a really fun one to play live, I used it quite a bit.”

Perhaps one of the most surprising things you have for sale is a Yamaha Billy Sheehan bass! We had no idea you were a fan…

“I can’t say I’m a huge Billy Sheehan fan. But of course I think he’s an amazing player. The reason I have that bass is that in 2006 I was out of Limp Bizkit for a few years. Ross Robinson, who produced Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, was working on From First To Last’s second record – which is the band Sonny Moore, now known as Skrillex, used to front. I was a Yamaha artist at the time and they asked me to play bass on the record and go on tour for a year. Yamaha gave me a few basses to take with me - one of which being this customized Billy Sheehan signature.

“It didn’t end up being the one that stuck. I ended up getting a Fender Jazz that sounded killer and worked best for that band. But the Billy Sheehan was cool and I did use it on some stuff. My band Black Light Burns were making a video to promote a tour and we ended up hanging that bass from a tree and spray-painted it completely white for no reason. We were just doing a bunch of dumb stuff, which is why it’s that color. We painted it for a gag and it’s been like that ever since, and I just didn’t know what to do with it.”

There’s a few 12-strings, including 1976 Guild acoustic used for the Wish You Were Here cover performed at the America: A Tribute to Heroes 9/11 benefit concert…

“Yeah there’s that Guild, plus a WEM model that sounds really cool and was still in tune when I last pulled out the case, which made me wonder about selling it, and also the Framus. It has this little volume thing that you can turn on for volume swells with your pinky, which is really neat. I actually have two of them – this 12 and a six-string, which I’m keeping.

“And there’s other stuff like the Vigier fretless that got used a bunch on the second Big Dumb Face record for some weird-sounding riffs. I didn’t do much with it after that and haven’t picked up in, say, three years so it was probably not worth keeping. When I first started in the music industry and began buying equipment I’d always tell myself, ‘I’m never selling this guitar or amp!’ I would be very attached to my gear. And I’m trying to break that spell because I’m carrying way too much stuff on my back.”

You like to put your guitars through their paces – for example, the whammy bar work on classic tracks like Hot Dog and, more recently, Out Of Style is pretty extreme!

“Yeah! I’ve got a great tech and I’m very finicky about how I like the bars, how close they are to the body, the angle of everything. We switch out all the standard Floyd Rose parts that screw on for gaskets that you tighten with an Allen wrench, just to make sure the bar stays at the right tightness. I don’t like it loose; I can’t play with the bar swinging around loose, or if it’s too tight. I’m very specific. It’s like a racecar clutch… it has to be exactly right.”

What do you think made you end up using techniques like that in your songwriting?

“The reason I write riffs like that is because I couldn’t afford effects pedals when I first started playing. All I had was this Washburn with a licensed Floyd Rose on it and I just started messing around with it more and more.

“As I got further into my career, I realized nobody else was doing this. I couldn’t find any other guitarists using the whammy bar almost like a trombone, bringing notes up and down to create a kind of suction that could work with the drums, coming up to a snare or diving down to a kick. It’s like this push-and-pull conversation, using the bar.”

That’s not the only way you get extra mileage out of your guitars. Songs like My Generation and Full Nelson utilize natural harmonics that create bell-like chimes to extend the fretboard…

“Yeah, it’s the same kind of thing. I like a lot of contrast in my riffs, so it’s not all in one area of the fretboard or octave. I like my ideas to jump around a lot. That’s where the idea for my four-string came about, because they’re tuned AADG with low A from a bass or F#F#BE depending on the project. Having a low bass string and then another A from a guitar allows me to do very quick single-note back and forth melodies and riffs, jumping between those strings. I don’t know why I started doing all this stuff. I just love the contrast.”

Speaking of your four-string collaboration with PRS, given that you’re well-known for being a Jackson artist, how exactly did that come about?

“I played PRS through the Chocolate Starfish era and I’ve started working with them again, as well as Jackson. I’m not exclusive to either one. I just finished playing in Danny Elfman’s band last year – not finished because I’m still in that band – but we completed a tour and PRS really equipped me with amazing stuff for that. They sent me some great Custom 24s with Floyds that sound fantastic.

“I don’t really play guitars that don’t have locking tremolo systems, unless they’re like Jaguar-style models. I really like Bilt guitars too, I have three of those, plus some Jazzmasters with humbuckers dropped into the bridge position. I love those Jazzmaster-style tremolos that Mastery make.”

Given your knack for ambient and atmospheric sounds, you’re definitely well-suited to that Danny Elfman gig, even more so when coupled with Nili Brosh, who is more of an Ibanez-wielding shredder-type guitarist…

“The two of us fit really well together because we can cover really different things. I’m really riff-heavy and am into making noise, while she’s just shredding all over the place. It was really easy to divvy up the parts! My favorite parts of the set are definitely the Big Mess stuff, which is his latest record. The first song, Sorry, is such a crazy ride. All of that material is insanely difficult.

“It’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, for sure, trying to keep up on stage with someone that advanced as a musician. I try to sponge and soak up everything I can from Danny. And I also get to play with Josh Freese who has been a good friend of mine for a long time – he’s such a comedian and so much fun to be around. I got to know Stu Brooks and Nili… we got so tight as a unit and I can’t wait to do it again. There are rumors of more stuff coming up. Everybody wants to, that’s for sure!”

So let’s have a quick look through your rig on this European tour. What amps are you running?

“I brought a Diezel VH4S over, which is stereo. We’re basically blending that with the EVH heads. I have this crazy VHT 6x12 cabinet plus one Mesa and one EVH 4x12. The Diezel is running one of the Mesas and the entire VHT cabinet, and the EVH is coming through its own matching cab. We’re using a blend of that, plus using a box to take the DI from the EVH straight to the PA.

“It’s a really cool sound – I think my tone is tougher and more aggressive distortion-wise than it ever has done. I could not help but smile when I first plugged it all in. And then for cleans I have two JC-120s!”

And what about the pedalboard – you don’t tend to travel light…

“I love my Boss delays. Mine are all glued in place so they don’t move and are set for specific songs. I also love the Strymon stuff: I’ve got a BigSky for two different reverbs and a TimeLine for a delay that’s preset for the song Boiler, and another one for Out of Style that’s slower because the song has more of a half-time bounce during those clean verses. I’ve got a Q-Tron Envelope Filter – that’s the sound for Full Nelson and Hot Dog verses.

“I’ve got a wah pedal that I use on songs like Pollution. I don’t really use it as a wah; it’s more to turn on for the EQ. I do run an overdrive for the JC-120s – right now it’s a Fulltone OCD. I also have that old Ibanez [CF7] Flanger Chorus, which has the Wack’d setting that sounds like a ring modulator. I use that for the verses of My Way. They don’t make them anymore, so I always try to buy them on eBay or whatever so we have a back stock.”

And, given your outlandish stage outfits, we’re dying to know – what’s your look for this run?

“I’ve had this custom-made armor mask along with matching shoulder pads. It looks really medieval but it’s also mirror-polished, so it’s going to look crazy on stage on top of my black suit. You will only see a medieval robot in this weird armor.”

There was a decade gap between 2011’s Gold Cobra and 2021’s Still Sucks. Are there any plans yet for new material?

“Yeah, we’re talking about writing during all the soundchecks this year because we’re doing so much touring. We want to get recording – we’re talking about a travel destination to make an album together next year. We’re looking at places, so new music… yessir!

“This thing has been going for so long. I thought it would last for a few years and I’d end up in art school saying ‘I was in a band once!’ But 27 years later, we’re still going, which is wild. I’ve been in Limp Bizkit for more than half my life. We get along better than ever now. No one is taking anything for granted. We’re all just happy to be here and having a lot of fun.”

• Head to Analogr for more information on the Wes Borland Collection.

Wes Borland has launched a huge gear sale and is selling off some real gems from his recording and touring career, including his first ever Mesa/Boogie guitar amp head – as used on Limp Bizkit’s 1997 debut album Three Dollar Bill, Y'All.

“I have been a gear head for 25 years,” notes Borland of the collection. “My mother calls me a hoarder...”

Now the guitarist is feeling the need for a clear-out and has launched a sale with 28 separate lots, covering everything from artwork, to guitar amps, effects and some appealing prototype and custom electric guitars.

“This is what happens when you’re a musician who’s able to buy gear for a long time,” he says, talking through the lots. “This is almost embarrassing to me, because it’s not even all of my gear.”

The headline item is the aforementioned Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier head, which like many of the items, comes adorned with Borland’s doodles.

“This was my first touring head,” says Borland. “Three Dollar Bill was recorded on this. It was the only head I had live at one point – just going out [on the road] with no backup.’

At the time of writing, it carries an estimate of $4,000 to $8,000.

Elsewhere, there’s a beautiful custom shop prototype (the second one made) of Borland’s signature guitar, the Yamaha CV820WB, which was built in LA.

“It was kind of based on a [Fender] Starcaster; in some ways based on a German carve on this weird single cutaway-style body and having this weird offset look.”

It was also used on the road with Limp Bizkit for a four-year period, running 2009-2013, before he began favoring Jacksons. “I’ll miss it, but it’s also been in storage so long that I have to be an adult here,” notes Borland.

The Yamaha carries a (broad) estimate of $8,000 to $20,000.

For our money, one of the most interesting lots is the Selmer Zodiac Twin Thirty. Borland notes it was purchased on the recommendation of Rick Rubin during the early stages of the Chocolate Starfish... sessions.

The Zodiac Twin Thirty is a British-built 2x12 combo amp that dates from the mid-’60s. The amps are notable for their tone selector buttons, which bypass the rotary controls.

“Rick Rubin was a big reason [for buying this]... He was like, ‘Billy Corgan hoards these things,’” says Borland. “I really liked the Contra Bass and High Treble settings. The High Treble is just this glistening, tinny, almost radio-like signal, where as the Contra Bass is just super in-your-face, which I love.”

There are four inputs, split across two channels, plus two 12” Celestion speakers and Borland’s has a built-in power convertor. It also features a footswitchable tremolo circuit, which has a pulsing light when engaged.

The Selmer has an estimate of $3,500 to $6,000, which isn’t bad when you consider a 1963 build is currently listed on Reverb for $3,848. It is also the thing that Borland says he is “having the most difficult time parting with.”

The above barely scratches the surface of the sale, though. There’s a heavily modded China-built Fender Starcaster, a Guild 12-string, an array of Orange heads, a USA Jackson Soloist in green sparkle... the list goes on – all the way down to a modded Squier Jaguar and Hohner nylon-string, which have more attainable prices. Then there’s the artwork, the stage-worn costumes and even a full drum kit.

Whether you’re tempted into bidding or not, it’s a fascinating cross-section of the gear accumulated by one of rock’s true individuals.

Head to Analogr to view the full Wes Borland collection.

Two years ago, the guitar community’s most prolific memers at Chibson USA unveiled the Durst Burst – a horrific and visionary Les Paul plastered with the face of Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst.

While initially just a concept posted to Chibson USA’s Instagram account, it quickly caught the attention of the Bizkit main man, who after commenting two broccoli emojis on the post, set the wheels in motion for the guitar to become a reality. And shortly after it did, it inevitably found its way into the hands of Durst himself.

Chibson founder Jason USA explains in a new YouTube video: “On the morning of November 30, 2018, I woke up from a dream I do not remember with the words ‘Durst burst’ in my brain. 

“Without hesitation, I began my mission to place Fred Durst’s image in the grains of a maple wood cap of a solidbody guitar. A day later, the Durst Burst [concept] was born.”

Jason USA says that after Durst engaged with Chibson’s original post, he called upon California’s East Bay Guitar Repair, hellbent on bringing the ridiculous schematic to life.

“Once the instrument was completed, I felt the nagging urgency to show the guitar to the one person who would have a pure interest in seeing it up close – the one and only Fred Durst.

“But with no way to get the instrument in front of Fred, it would be nearly impossible for me to carry out my mission. Until, exactly one year [after] the Durst Burst’s inception, my personal assistant Ashton called me to tell me that had won two tickets to see Limp Bizkit perform at an intimate show at Roxy, in the heart of Hollywood, California.”

Jason and Ashton attended the gig, and after Ashton partook in a spot of moshing, the pair tracked Durst down at a local bar and grill, where the nu metal legend saw the Durst Burst model in the flesh for the first time.

“Taken aback by the iconic instrument, Fred asked me if this was some type of deeply layered attempt at trolling,” Jason continues.

“I did not have the heart to tell him that the whole idea had come to me in a dream and that I believe that the concept was something cosmic and bigger than the both of us.”

Jason explains that the encounter left him compelled to give the guitar to Durst as a gift.

“I remember him staring at the instrument for a moment, and then he confided with me about the image on the Durst Burst, explaining that the baseball cap persona which so many people would both love and hate was simply Fred’s take on an antagonistic Andy Kaufman-esque bad guy wrestler persona, mixed with some Tony Clifton-isms for good measure, a secret that not many would know, let alone understand.

“Now that the Durst Burst was finally with its rightful owner, Ashton and I would continue to honor Fred’s spirit by having the replica of the original Durst Burst made.”

So there are, in fact, two Durst Bursts in existence, doubling our chances of ever laying eyes on one in person – which we we were fortunate enough to do back at NAMM earlier this year. But was this actually the Durst Burst V2? The plot thickens…

What have you been watching over the summer? No prizes for guessing evening viewing habits in the Fripp/Willcox household, as this week, Robert and Toyah have tackled Limp Bizkit’s seminal 1999 nu-metal slam Nookie – one of the defining tracks of Woodstock ’99, documented by Netflix’s recent, and quite, quite excellent, Trainwreck documentary.

We’ve seen the King Crimson prog icon perform some unlikely material during the couple’s long-running Sunday Lunch series – not least classics from Rage Against the Machine, Queens of the Stone Age and Green Day – but nothing could quite prepare us for the sight of Fripp digging into Wes Borland’s pit-churning drop-tuned riffs while Toyah handles those love ’em or hate ’em Fred Durst lyrics.

And yes, that is a sideways, diamante-adorned baseball cap atop the head of one of the most innovative guitarists the instrument has ever known.

Rather than drop his customary Fernandes single-cuts down to Borland-approved tunings, Fripp turns to one of his signature double-locking Stealth models, which are built by the UK’s Crimson Guitars.

It’s hard to be sure what version of the guitar is being used during the clip, but we can tell you that the Stealth models tend to be fairly tricked out, with examples boasting a custom-made ball bearing tremolo system, Graph Tech Ghost piezo system with hexaphonic MIDI, plus Fripp’s beloved Fernandes Sustainer system and a set of bespoke pickups. You can check out all of that in the demo below.

In a recent exclusive interview with Guitarist magazine, Fripp described his approach to the instrument as “What would Hendrix sound like playing the Bartók String Quartets?” Good to know there’s room for a few nu-metal floor fillers within that philosophy.

Fan footage has emerged of Fred Durst inviting a fan onstage at a recent Limp Bizkit show to perform a cover of Rage Against the Machine’s Killing In The Name.

The show took place on May 7 in Wilkes-Barre, PA and saw the band – led by a buoyant Durst, dressed in full Dad Vibes regalia – seamlessly blend from their 1999 track Re-Arranged into RATM’s signature hit.

In the footage below (around 3 mins 53 seconds), founding member Sam Rivers kicks off Tim Commerford’s iconic bass riff and Durst can be heard yelling, “Karaoke!”

Durst then invites an audience member to step on stage and share the vocal duties. Much to the delight of the crowd, the fan doesn’t miss a beat and injects a new level of energy into the performance, with the rest of the band upping their game to match – clock Borland's cunning alternate-picked octave take on Tom Morello's solo.

In a gesture of thanks, the onstage guest is then treated to some Gatorade and an honorary sit down on Durst’s onstage Dad Vibes La-Z-Boy chair, as guitarist Wes Borland kicks it in to recline mode. 

“That's my man right there,” comments Durst. “He was going hard as fuck!”

Limp Bizkit have been touring in support of Still Sucks, which was released last fall and represents their first album in nine years. The tour continues until May 31. 

Head to Limp Bizkit’s official site for tickets and more information. 

When Wes Borland shot to fame on the cresting wave of the ‘90s nu-metal scene, it was for his abilities on the seven-string guitar, using that extra low-end muscle to add weight to percussive riffs. But in the 21st century, is he about to do likewise with four-strings? 

Don’t rule it out. One, he has form, on occasion favoring a custom four-string baritone, and two, Borland has just taken receipt of a four-string custom build from the high-end electric guitar manufacturer par excellence PRS – and he says it might just be the “most amazing” instrument he has ever played.

Sitting down with PRS to talk guitars, Limp Bizkit’s Still Sucks Tour and of course his Coachella dates with Danny Elfman, Borland said he couldn’t be happier with this four string bass guitar hybrid, hinting that this prototype could be put into work.

“The new four string is probably the most amazing instrument I’ve ever played,” said Borland. “Having a locking tremolo system has very much expanded what I’m attempting with that whole thing. That idea. To have the classic A A D G or F# F# B E tuning that I’ve been using for so long paired with all of the whammy bar riffing I do is on another level for me.”

With Borland’s electric guitar-bass hybrid having been revised last year, Borland says the design is exactly where he needs it to be, and was used on Limp Bizkit’s latest album, Still Sucks, albeit in an unorthodox fashion.

“The guitar is way past prototype in my opinion,” he continued. “I think it’s finally reached the form it was always wanting to be in my head. I couldn’t be happier with it. It actually did end up on the album last minute, but not in a way that showed off its capabilities. I used it on a melodic EBow lead on the bridge of the INXS cover Don’t Change.”

There is no word as to whether this will see a wider release. Borland has been a PRS artist for some time. But the way his name is emblazoned on the truss rod cover, allied to the instance of the word prototype, this looks like it could be a left-turn for PRS.

Of course, a guitar-bass hybrid with a floating vibrato, a pair of EMG humbuckers and an EMG single-coil jammed in there at the neck is quite a controversial spec for the dowdy conservatism of the guitar community but it might just catch on… 

It’s not like it’s that radical or anything – hey, they could have taken inspiration from a vintage '60s Stratocaster and reversed the headstock. Now, that would have caused a commotion, right?

You can read the full interview with Borland over at PRS Guitars.

Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland has confirmed he will be performing with Danny Elfman’s band when they take the stage at Coachella 2022.

Borland replaces Nine Inch Nails’ Robin Finck, who is otherwise engaged on NIN business, and was indeed recommended for the gig as electric guitar wrangler for hire by Finck himself. 

Borland joins Elfman regular and fretboard pyrotechnician Nili Brosh, who, with Finck, helped light up Elfman’s epic solo album, Big Mess.

Elfman’s first solo album in decades, Big Mess is described by the Grammy and Emmy-winning composer as ‘chamber punk’, an anxious, industrial style that abuts metal and alternative rock. 

Written and recorded during the pandemic, with Elfman holed up in his cabin with a bunch of guitars and a laptop, it’s a tense, nervous headache of an album, with songs animated by poorly digested pandemic anxieties and the ever-roiling crises in democratic politics. 

Such is life, but it makes for great art. When speaking to GW back in June 2021, Elfman described Big Mess as a product of its time and a culmination of where his musical tastes have taken him over the past three decades.

“More and more, I tend to like extremes,” he said. “I either want to hear something strangely beautiful and abstract, atmospheric, or really intense, that just grabs me and holds me. I am a big fan of [Einstürzende] Neubauten, over in Berlin. Even though I can’t say their name properly I love their music. I love Tool. I love Nine Inch Nails.”

Elfman sees his role as writing the song and bringing noise and feedback, with Brosh and now Borland’s job to provide the technical firepower to complement it.

“If we play, Robin and Nili are great, and when you put me in it, it messes it up,” said Elfman. “That was kind of the sound I wanted. My guitar was the feedback and the messiness, and that all came out of me, and all of my vocals were recorded on this little handheld mic up in this room.”

Borland confirmed the news that he was Elfman’s Coachella pinch-hitter on Instagram, where he also shared a picture of his rig. It looks quite different to his Limp Bizkit setup, with a Diezel VH4 guitar amp and 2x12” speaker cabinet joined by a Line 6 HX Effects, DigiTech Whammy, Boss guitar tuner, and what looks like a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor. 

He also looks to be running a pair of Boss DD-3 digital delay pedals – perhaps one short, one long – and a couple of pedals that readers with better eyesight will have to identify. You can check it out below.

Coachella takes place the weekends of April 15 to 17, and 22 to 24, and is headlined by Harry Styles and Billie Eilish.

Limp Bizkit have experienced something of a career revival this year, introducing new material and hits alike to a new generation in a headline-generating Lollapalooza set in July, and releasing Still Sucks, their first new album in a decade, on Halloween.

Still Sucks opens with Out of Style, a hell-raiser of a song that we named one of our essential guitar tracks last week, largely due to guitarist Wes Borland's kinetic, whammy bar-driven opening riff.

We weren't the only ones impressed with the song either. It's already inspired a host of covers, some of which were sent directly to, and drew the attention of, Borland himself. 

To correct mistakes he saw in some of the covers, and to offer some tone tips for the song, Borland took to Instagram over the weekend to give fans an up-close look at how the riff should be played. You can check out the resulting video below.

Armed with one of his trademark Jackson V electric guitars, the Limp Bizkit guitarist wastes little time in getting right to it, attacking the riff with laser-like precision and ferocious aggression.

After finishing it off, Borland notes that "you want to have a Boss [NS-2] Noise Suppressor [or a similar pedal] at the front of your chain in order to really clamp that [the riff] down," and for the mutes in between the jerks of the whammy bar.

Borland also mentions in the video's caption that he's tuned to B, F#, B, E, G#, C# for the song.

It's not the world's most in-depth tutorial, but if you wanted to have a go at the riff yourself, it's certainly a good reference point to start from.

The days might be getting shorter, but our weekly list of unmissable guitar-driven new releases sure isn’t. 

This week, we’ve got some whammy bar magic from none other than Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland, a nostalgic rocker from Neil Young & Crazy Horse, an anarchic genre-fusing bop from Nova Twins, another helping of tough dual-guitar magic from Smith/Kotzen, and a whole lot more.

So take a look, 2021 sure isn't done producing awesome new music yet.

Nova Twins – Antagonist

Hotly tipped by Tom Morello and featured artists in Fender’s recent Player Plus launch, Nova Twins are rapidly becoming one of the UK’s most exciting riff-rock exports.

Tracks like Antagonist are precisely why: not content with packing one of the biggest riffs of the year, it fuses punk aggression with nu-metal hooks and deft electronic touches for a molotov cocktail aimed at any modern guitar music that plays things a little too safe.

The duo’s pedalboards remain a closely guarded secret, so we may never know what exactly is producing the anarchic dirt that’s coating Amy Love’s serrated riffs here, but there’s more to Antagonist than pure grit. The attitude and energy are palpable, amplified to arena levels by a huge production. All of which seems appropriate given the duo’s recent signing to Marshall Records, surely the loudest record label on the planet. (MAB)

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Heading West

Neil Young’s documented those who set out for a better life in distant lands in his songs before, from more than one perspective too. 

The reverence Young showed for the six gun-carrying Western Hero (from 1994’s Sleeps with Angels) stands alongside the earnest documentation of the atrocities of the Spanish conquistadors on Cortez the Killer, which – even if it’s not without its flaws – remains one of Young’s most towering achievements. 

The stakes aren’t anywhere near as high in Heading West, which tells the tale of Young’s own teenage journey West, to Winnipeg, Canada from Ontario after his parents’ divorce. Despite the fact that it’s well-trodden territory, or maybe because of it, the song – the second single from his upcoming album, Barn – will be as comforting and warm to Young fans as a warm cup of coffee on a clear, crisp fall Sunday morning.

For all of his many collaborations, there’s no greater home for Young’s gnarled, overdriven riffing than the ramshackle but always faithful accompaniment of Crazy Horse’s long-tenured rhythm section – bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina.

There are no extended lead guitar excursions here, no feedback-soaked left turns – heck, there isn’t even a solo to be found at all. Setting his loose, limber and deep-in-the-red rhythm work against Nils Lofgren’s saloon piano though, Young paints a picture that both bears the weight of decades of history, but is still completely timeless. It’s a skill that few other songwriters possess. (JM)

Smith/Kotzen – Better Days 

It’s only been eight months since Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith and The Winery Dogs’ Richie Kotzen joined forces for their scorching self-titled debut studio album, though the pair are already back with new music following the surprise announcement they’ll be releasing a four-track EP later this month.

Better Days – the effort’s title track – bursts out the gate with some infectious riffing, and soon gives way to a boatload of awe-inspiring fretboard navigation. Kotzen is on top form with his rapid-fire fingerpicking-driven runs, as is Smith, who offers up a monstrously melodic interlude around the halfway mark.

The pierce de resistance is undeniably the back-and-forth exchange that occurs between the two in the latter half of the track, with the guitarists going toe-to-toe with each other by way of some breathless licks and scale runs.

If Better Days has whetted your appetite, do not fear: the rest of the EP is only three weeks away. (MO)

Limp Bizkit – Out Of Style

It’s been 10 long years, but Limp Bizkit are back, and they’re back swinging. Out of Style – the opener of the nu-metal juggernaut’s new and totally inaccurately titled new album Still Sucks – contains possibly one of the greatest guitar riffs ever laid down on record by body paint-happy six-string slinger Wes Borland.

Upon frontman Fred Durst’s instruction to “hit it!”, the guitarist calls upon his tried and tested whammy bar skills for one of the most inventive electric guitar riffs we’ve heard in quite some time.

But reminding us that they’re also underrated masters of dynamics, the verse sections see drummer John Otto and bassist Sam Rivers drop out of the mix temporarily, making way for a series of crystalline-sounding clean guitar licks to set the stage for the chaotic riff’s reprise a few seconds later. What a return for one of nu-metal’s biggest names. (SR)

Porcupine Tree – Harridan

Given Steven Wilson’s assertion that “rock music – particularly the guitar – hasn’t really managed to reinvent itself” at the start of the year, the last thing we expected was new Porcupine Tree material to close out 2021.

Floydian in its progressive scope, Harridan is the first new material from the band in 12 years, and it sounds as if they haven’t skipped a beat.

While Wilson’s clean electric and acoustic rhythms take a more textural role for the song’s first half, he drops a colossal, almost boneheaded pentatonic riff partway through, contrasted with heavily effected electrics.

There are some beautiful phased lines, and an emotive acoustic outro to see out the eight-minute run time, which leaves no sonic tone left unturned. All told, it’s a breathtaking comeback. (MAB)

Hana Vu – Gutter

LA-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Hana Vu is set to release Public Storage – her latest album, and first for Ghostly International Records – tomorrow, November 5.

The album’s final single is Gutter, a serrated, magical piece of guitar-pop that glides blissfully thanks to the force of multiple orchestras – an orchestra of guitars and, well, a regular old orchestra.

The riffs and bend-heavy leads toward the song’s end are brawny, chiseled and refined, and stand in perfect contrast to the dissonant buzz of guitar feedback that hums omnipresently for the song’s full duration.

A lot of folks, including us, are already starting to assemble their best-of-2021 lists. Something tells us we’ll need to leave some room for Public Storage after we hear it tomorrow. (JM)

Ad Infinitum – Inferno

Symphonic metallers Ad Infinitum last week released their second full-length album, Chapter II – Legacy, and its third track, Inferno, plays host to some immense guitar work from Adrian Thessenvitz. From the delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios of the intro to the djenty electric guitar riffs to the slide-driven solos, Thessenvitz here establishes himself as a guitarist to watch in the symphonic metal scene.

He explains: “That's what I love about Ad Infinitum's second album in general: We combined all our strengths, the sounds we like and our favorite genres. And this song is, from a guitarist's point of view, the most versatile and most interesting tune.” (SR)

 Kris Barras Band – My Parade 

Kris Barras and his band recently announced their fourth studio album, Death Valley Paradise, and shared their first new music since 2019’s Light It Up in the form of My Parade – a four-minute thrill ride that is equal parts sway-inducing guitar work and infectious oversized vocal hooks.

It’s a no-frills, rock ‘n’ roll-fueled “call-to-arms” for which Barras has employed an entirely new rhythm section featuring drummer Billy Hammett and bassist Kelpie Mackenzie, who have helped contribute to the band’s “heavier and more angsty” sonic direction. 

With all the infectious aggression and authoritative playing you’d expect from a former cage fighter, Barras serves up a tantalizing teaser of the upcoming album, which he assembled after the pandemic pushed him to the point of “anything goes”. 

There are some storming powerchords, swampy licks, wailing bends and just about everything you’d want from a motivational get-up-and-go anthem. A worthy addition to any pre-weekend playlist. (MO)

Venom Prison – Judges of the Underworld

Rapidly ascending UK quintet Venom Prison have just released Judges of the Underworld, the cacophonous debut single from their forthcoming fourth studio album, Erebos.

A metalcore masterclass, the track sees guitarists Ash Gray and Ben Thomas serve up a clutch of rapid-fire alternate picked riffs and squealing pinch harmonics, which underpin the frenetic drum work of Joe Bills and guttural vocals of frontwoman Larissa Stupar.

There's also a killer dueling guitar moment at the 2:47 mark, which introduces a refreshing sense of melody to what's an otherwise crushing mosh pit spinner. Whether you're a fan of astonishingly heavy breakdowns or guitar solos, this track has something for you. (SR)

Nu-metal titans Limp Bizkit are to release Still Sucks – their sixth studio album and first in a decade – this Sunday (October 31).

The news was posted to the band's social media, as well as by each of the band members – Durst, guitarist Wes Borland, drummer John Otto, bassist Sam Rivers and turntablist and producer DJ Lethal – earlier today (October 29). They each also shared the album's very Bizkit-esque artwork, which can be seen below.

Wes Borland wrote: “Our first album in over a decade comes out this Sunday! Happy Halloween!” DJ Lethal added: “Limp Bizkit – Still Sucks coming to a cassette player near you.”

The band deleted all previous content on their Instagram page prior to the announcement, kicking off their new feed with a review from an individual named Jake Bacon, who bears a striking resemblance to Borland.

“This really cool band called Limp Bizkit hasn't dropped a record in 10 years or something like that, like 2011,” says the beer-loving, mullet-wearing music journo. “Anyways, they're putting out this killer record – it's killer man – they're putting it out on Halloween. How wicked is that.”

He then proceeds to play several audio snippets from the record, beginning with a monumentally heavy guitar riff from the album opener, Out of Style.

The rest of the album looks like it'll see Durst and co dabble in numerous genres and styles as per usual; there's hip-hop, heavy metal and even an ultra-produced, boy-band-esque track.

Following 2011's Gold Cobra, the album – which was long-rumored to be called Stampede of the Disco Elephants – ties in with frontman Fred Durst's recent retro suburban dad makeover, and will feature the band's latest single, Dad Vibes.

Prior to its official release, the band unveiled the single over the PA during the outro of their set at Lollapalooza in July.

During an appearance on Drinks With Johnny – the podcast hosted by Avenged Sevenfold bassist Johnny Christ – back in June, Borland revealed that the band had been in the studio around seven times over the past 10 years to “try and complete” the record. 

He said that much of the album's holdup could be attributed to Fred Durst not being happy with his vocals.

“We probably have 35 songs recorded instrumentally, and he's done vocals on them and then thrown the vocals away.” he explained. “So I think he's finally at the point now where he's gonna pick a set of these songs that he's finally cool with and finish them and we're gonna finish the record.”

Borland added that “the riffs and the music [on Still Sucks are] the best stuff” he's ever composed as a musician.

Until today's official album announcement, it was unclear whether Ready to Go and The Endless Slaughter – two tracks released in 2013 and 2014, respectively – would appear on the new record. It is now confirmed that they will not.

Still Sucks arrives October 31. Check out the its tracklisting below.

1. Out of Style 
2. Dirty Rotten Bizkit
3. Dad Vibes
4. Turn It Up, Bitch
5. Don't Change
6. You Bring Out the Worst in Me
7. Love the Hate
8. Barnacle
9. Empty Hole
10. Pill Popper
11. Snacky Poo
12. Goodbye

Just as with 2020, it can certainly be said that few things have gone according to plan in 2021. But hey! The year’s brought us some amazing music, and – by the looks of this week – there’s still more to come in the year’s final quarter.

Recent days have seen IDLES re-emerge with a razor-tipped piece of soul called The Beachland Ballroom, Ghost return just in time for Halloween season with the appropriately spooky (and heavy) Hunter’s Moon, The Lumineers plug in and change things up on Brightside, and Wet Leg treat us to some sprightly indie-pop on Wet Dream.

There's plenty more where that came from, so why not finish the month strong with some of our favorite new songs?

The Lumineers – Brightside 

Since The Lumineers Ho Hey’d their way to top of the folk rock world back in 2012, the two-piece outfit – composed of founding members Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites – have been a resolute household name, thanks to their accomplished stripped-back, acoustic-based discography.

But for Brightside – the lead single from their upcoming album of the same name – The Lumineers have totally flipped the script: they’ve picked up an electric guitar and employed a noticeably more overdriven tonal direction.

In what is a fairly radical change in relation to the rest of the band's repertoire, Brightside is a fresh and welcome release, one that makes ample use of an easy-going, rumbling guitar hook that sees The Lumineers lean away from their acoustic soundscapes towards a more festival-esque indie-rock flavor.

If it’s a sign of things to come, Brightside the album could be a big turning point for The Lumineers, who seem to have shed the shackles of the acoustic for something even bigger – their Ho Hey for 2021, perhaps. (MO)

Wet Leg - Wet Dream

The debut single from this offset-slinging UK duo, Chaise Longue, saw them win plaudits from Hayley Williams and Iggy Pop, chalking up an almighty one-million video views in the process, and its followup looks likely to generate similar hysteria.

Of course, it would be easy to attribute that to Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers’ irreverent, catchy lyrical stylings – “Baby, do you want to come home with me / I’ve got Buffalo '66 on DVD” – but it’s teamed with a smart songwriting sensibility that crams an awful lot into two-and-a-half minutes.

There are nods to post-punk, disco and riot grrrl, and it’s all wrapped up in a chorus riff that would certainly get Albert Hammond Jr’s nod of approval. They’re already being hailed as one of the country’s most exciting guitar bands, but if Wet Leg can maintain this kind of momentum, we’re in for some serious – and not-so-serious – anthems over the coming months. (MAB)

Ghost – Hunter’s Moon

Tobias Forge – who recently discarded the mantle of Cardinal Copia to once again resume his role as Papa Emeritus – is back with his band of Nameless Ghouls for their first new single in two years.

Though the nature of the track is somewhat haunting – it’s set to appear in the end credits of the upcoming slasher movie, Halloween Kills, and its accompanying music video bears several horror references – in typical Ghost fashion, it’s musically quite upbeat, often utilizing a major key.

This juxtaposition between subject matter and composition is something that the Swedish rock outfit have always nailed, and they do it to superior effect on this new single, seamlessly blending pristine clean guitar lines with heavier and more distorted riffs throughout. (SR)

Converge – Blood Moon

When Converge joined forces with Chelsea Wolfe, Ben Chisholm and Stephen Brodsky in 2016 for a set at the Roadburn Festival, it triggered a musical chain reaction that would go on to be the catalyst behind Bloodmoon: I – an upcoming collaborative effort that was announced earlier this week.

The album’s seven-minute lead single, Blood Moon, is an eerily assembled sign of things to come – swamping riffs, unrelenting guitar sucker punches and a vocal concoction brewed together in a cauldron of Wolfe’s atmospheric tones and Jacob Bannon’s bruising wails.

Said to be an effort “grander than the typical four-piece” dynamic of conventional Converge, Bloodmoon: I – surely to be followed up by a Bloodmoon: II somewhere down the line – promises to see each respective collaborator at the edge of their musical comfort zones, which can only mean one thing: it's going to be one darn good album. (MO)

IDLES – The Beachland Ballroom

Few people foresaw the turn IDLES would take on The Beachland Ballroom – the first single from their upcoming album, Crawler. Even the band’s guitarist, Mark Bowen, said “I didn’t know Joe could sing like that," of frontman Joe Talbot’s incredible performance on the unexpectedly soulful song.

Soulful it is, though, with an elegant waltz of a rhythm, a church pews-like organ highlighting the song’s chord progression, and Talbot’s vocals, which come shockingly close to a classic pop croon at points.

Of course though, this is an IDLES song, and before long, Talbot is screaming “Damage! Damage! Damage!” over the band’s increasingly frenzied attack.

Bowen and fellow guitarist Lee Kiernan manage to tie these disparate strains together by sneaking some of their trademark dissonance and discord into the song’s more gentle half, and turbocharging its second half with some nifty call-and-response, dual-guitar work.

As big as IDLES have gotten in such a short span of time, The Beachland Ballroom, astonishing and surprisingly accessible as it is, has the potential to really kick this British quintet’s ascent into high gear. (JM)

Limp Bizkit – Dad Vibes

When Limp Bizkit played a brand-new song over the PA during their set at Lollapalooza 2021, we were naturally dying to hear a studio version. So when said studio version dropped earlier today, we were suitably stoked.

The fresh cut – which comes ahead of the nu-metal giants’ as-yet-unannounced sixth album – sees a rather middle class-looking Fred Durst serve up some killer rhymes over the thrilling electric guitar work of Wes Borland, who judging by his outfit at that Lollapalooza performance, has no intention of embracing the conventional dad look any time soon. (SR)

The Lathums – I Won't Lie 

In case you haven’t heard, The Lathums – an indie rock four-piece from Wigan, England – are on course to beat Drake – multi-award winning and chat-topping rap powerhouse – to the number one spot on the UK’s album charts this week. Oh, and they’re about to do it with their debut album, How Beautiful Life Can Be.

Listen to I Won't Lie and you’ll see why the group, who have released their first-ever studio effort to rave reviews, have made such tsunami-sized waves with just 12 tracks. Harking back to early years Arctic Monkeys with a smidge of The Smiths and a healthy helping of contemporary indie rock revivalism, I Won't Lie is the epitome of The Lathums.

Irresistible electric guitar hooks, effortless strums, charging bass pumps, captivating grooves and a piercing lead line all amalgamate to form one cruising listening experience that gets straight to the point – the point being three minutes of Really Good Music. 

It’s a genuine David versus Goliath moment for grass roots bands, and if anyone can pull it off, The Lathums certainly can. (MO)

Bartees Strange, Ohmme & Eric Slick - Province

Even 15 years after its release, no-one has managed to make a record that sounds anything like TV On the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain. Highlights from the album abound, but Province, a towering ballad that surges and swoons over David Sitek’s alternately funky and tornado-like guitar playing (and features David Bowie, for good measure), remains one of its unforgettable milestones.

Recreating the song’s all-enveloping sonic storm is near-impossible, and to their credit – on their new collaborative cover of the song –  Bartees Strange, Ohmme and Eric Slick don’t try to.

Opting to replicate the original song’s sharp-edged but simple electric riff on an acoustic, Slick leaves ample room for the voices of Strange and Ohmme – a duo comprised of Sima Cunningham & Macie Stewart – to beautifully intermingle with his own.  

Province, with its near-heavenly aura, is an incredibly difficult song to accurately capture, but this trio’s managed to do so perfectly. We certainly wouldn’t complain if they had more collabs up their sleeve in the future… (JM)

Orchards – Drive Me Home

Any new release from the UK math-pop outfit is cause for celebration, and Drive Me Home showcases guitarist Sam Rushton’s technicolor approach to effects pedals in full force.

There’s a more ethereal edge to his usual multi-octave, POG-bolstered tone here, with some wide stereo delay and reverb lending his irresistible riffs an ’80s aesthetic, which suits Orchards’ feelgood vibes down to a tee.

And, naturally, it’s all topped off with an earworm of a chorus hook that has a 97.68% chance of remaining firmly lodged in your brain until new EP Trust Issues arrives in November. (MAB)

After broadcasting it over the PA during the finale of their July 31 Lollapalooza show in Chicago, Limp Bizkit have officially released their latest single, Dad Vibes.

The track sees frontman Fred Durst – who now sports a retro dad look, with grey hair, shades and a handlebar mustache – serve his instantly recognizable lyrical flows over both stripped-back beats and more guitar-y sections driven by enigmatic six-string slinger Wes Borland. Check it out below.

Regarding the status of Limp Bizkit's new album, reportedly titled Stampede of the Disco Elephants – the followup to 2011's Gold Cobra – the band recently revealed in an Instagram story that “new songs will begin to leak, one after the other in rapid succession, very soon”, adding that a new album will drop “soon thereafter”.

Earlier this year, guitarist Wes Borland appeared on Drinks With Johnny – a podcast hosted by Avenged Sevenfold's Johnny Christ – where he offered a further update on the band's sixth album.

“We've probably, in the last 10 years, been in the studio to try and complete the record, I wanna say, seven times, to different studios,” he said.

But as the guitarist explained, many of the album's delays can be attributed to Fred Durst's discontent with his vocals.

“We probably have 35 songs recorded instrumentally, and he's done vocals on them and then thrown the vocals away.” he explained.

“So I think he's finally at the point now where he's gonna pick a set of these songs that he's finally cool with and finish them and we're gonna finish the record. So, fingers crossed.”

He also said that “the riffs and the music [are] the best stuff” he's ever composed as a musician, adding that he has “no doubt that [Fred will] come and bring it and it's gonna be a great record.”

Limp Bizkit announced the title of the album back in 2012, and subsequently released two singles, Ready to Go and The Endless Slaughter. It's not yet clear these two tracks will appear on the LP.

Limp Bizkit have unveiled a new song, Dad Vibes, by broadcasting it over the PA as part of a finale to their July 31 Lollapalooza show in Chicago.

Durst intros the track sporting a new look, which appears to take inspiration from the track title (or maybe the Beastie Boys' Sabotage video).

Unusually, Wes Borland and co don’t actually play the track live. Instead, they send a recorded version over the PA, as Durst heads into the crowd spraying out T-shirts.

The song gives fans an early taste of the first Limp Bizkit album since 2011’s Gold Cobra. The band worked on a follow-up effort with Ross Robinson titled Stampede Of The Disco Elephants, but it was never completed to their satisfaction, despite the release of several singles from the record.

Limp Bizkit also debuted a new song at their pre-Lollapalooza show at Chicago’s Metro venue in a similar manner – see below – though they did not name the track...

The rest of Limp Bizkit’s Lollapalooza set was heavy on the hits, including Nookie, Break Stuff and a host of Chocolate Starfish material.

Fear Factory six-stringer Dino Cazares was reportedly asked to join Limp Bizkit in 2001, and replace then-ex-guitarist Wes Borland.

During a recent appearance on the Talk Toomey podcast, Cazares details meeting the eccentric nu-metallers for the first time, and how the band later ended up offering him an audition.

“We were on tour with Iron Maiden around ’95 when they had [vocalist] Blaze Bayley,” he says. “We were playing everywhere and we met the guys from Limp Bizkit. 

“They came on our bus, played the demo – their first demo – and they said that Ross Robinson was going to be producing the album... and [that] they were gonna be in LA and [that we should] come hang out.

“And so Ross Robinson called us up and Limp Bizkit were there and I was able to be on their first record on a song called Indigo Flow. Later on they had asked me to audition for Limp Bizkit when they lost Wes, [but] I respectfully declined.”

Cazares also remembers seeing Limp Bizkit explode in popularity around the same time.

“The minute they started selling 70,000 records a week, it was stupid. It was fucking insane how they blew up. 

“We were on tour with Megadeth, Korn, Flotsam And Jetsam and [we were] opening up. Literally on that tour things started to take a shift for that band, because I remember this was still their first album and they'd been working that album for about a year-and-a-half before it really started to take off.”

Fear Factory are currently gearing up to release new album, Aggression Continuum. Two tracks have been released thus far: the impossibly heavy Disruptor and the blistering Fuel Injected Suicide Machine.

Eddie Van Halen once held a gun to Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst’s head following a jam session – that is, according to a new book by filmmaker and author Andrew Bennett.

The book, Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days and Nights with the Genius of Eddie Van Halen, chronicles Bennett’s time with the electric guitar player in 2006 and 2007, when he was filming and photographing Van Halen at Eddie’s 5150 home studio to document the band’s reunion tour.

The Durst shenanigans took place several years earlier, when Eddie and Fred were introduced at a party shortly after Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland’s exit from the band. 

After it was suggested they work together, Durst, according to Bennett, responded that it “would be hilarious. The greatest guitar player ever plays with the worst band ever.”

Eddie did indeed go on to jam with Limp Bizkit at a house in Beverly Hills, but abruptly split the session after people there began smoking pot, leaving his guitar and amp behind. Bennett recounted Eddie saying the experience was like being "a scholar amongst kindergartners."

Things went even further south when Eddie tried contacting Durst the next day to retrieve his gear, and received no reply.

“Eddie once bought an assault vehicle from a military auction,” Bennett writes, via Ultimate Classic Rock. “It has a shine gun mount on the back and is not legal. Eddie drove that assault vehicle through L.A., into Beverly Hills, then parked and left it running on the front lawn of the house Limp Bizkit was rehearsing in.

“He got out wearing no shirt, his hair in a Samurai bun on top of his head, his jeans held up with a strand of rope and combat boots held together by duct tape. And he had a gun in his hand.”

Bennett says he recalls Eddie telling him, “That asshole answered the door. I put my gun to that stupid fucking red hat of his, and I said, ‘Where’s my shit, motherfucker?’ That fucking guy just turned to one of his employees and starts yelling at him to grab my shit.”

He continues, “Eddie Van Halen stood on the front lawn of a residential home in Beverly Hills in broad daylight, smoking a cigarette while holding a gun on Fred Durst as he went back and forth from the house to the assault vehicle, lugging amps and guitars.”

In 2018, Eddie Van Halen launched legal action against Bennett, accusing him of trying to release video material of Van Halen without permission.

For more information on Eruption in the Canyon, head here.

From having his pedalboard drenched with a “jacuzzi amount of water” mid song to being fake chair-smashed by Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit electric guitar player Wes Borland hasn’t always had an easy go of things. 

But Borland always perseveres, as demonstrated in a new Instagram post where the guitarist announced he had “nailed” his first show back after recovering from a broken hand.

“I can’t express the amount of anxiety I was having leading up to this but three fingers was enough to get the job done,” he wrote.

As for the Bizkit haters out there that might attest that three fingers is perhaps already two more than necessary to jam, say, Break Stuff or Nookie, may we direct you to Borland’s own words of wisdom from years back:

“Musicians are not mathematicians. Feeling and soul over technique and speed.”

Preach on, Wes, and welcome back.

Limp Bizkit were halfway through their 1999 hit “Break Stuff” at the Boomtown Fair festival in Winchester, England, when a “jacuzzi amount of water,” in guitarist Wes Borland’s words, came crashing through the stage ceiling directly above him and quite literally broke all the stuff on his pedalboard.

The incident, which occurred near the end of the band’s set on August 12, was the result of an excessive amount of rainwater having pooled up on the roof of the venue. Fan-filmed footage captured the moment that the ceiling above Borland gave way and water drenched his equipment—which was followed by frontman Fred Durst letting out a gleeful laugh and cracking, “The pedalboard is gonna go out right now.”

To the band’s—and Borland’s—credit, they finished the song, though not the rest of their set. Immediately after "Break Stuff," Borland exited the stage, knocking over a few pieces of gear in the process. “Unfortunately, the guitar rig just blew up,” Durst says afterward. “Goodnight!”

Borland later took to Instagram to display the damage done. “This is what a pedalboard looks like when it rains all day and the ceiling of the stage you're playing breaks open and a jacuzzi amount of water gets dumped on top of you on the second to last song of your set,” he wrote.

The next day, he was back with an update that stuff was now slightly less broken: “We fixed my pedalboard today. 2 days of letting everything dry out and massive rewiring and problem solving with @kadaver13 who is my hero right now. My looper pedal is gone and half of my power (we're using batteries tonight) but my rig is on the way to recovery.”

Last night, Ed Sheeran previewed his fictional new album—Ed Sheeran Sings Heavy Metal—on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon, who played a turtlenecked spokesman named Steve Joshua, called the album a disc for people who "enjoy the morbid and disturbing themes of heavy metal music, but wish it had a more cheerful, pleasant sound."

Sheeran then grabbed his Martin guitar and performed bits of Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills," followed by Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff."

Of course, Ed Sheeran Sings Heavy Metal comes with a bonus disc, Ed Sheeran Sings Hardcore Rap. Sheeran also played a bit of Ty Dolla $ign's "Paranoid."

Watch it all unfold below!

P.S.: We've covered Sheeran on GuitarWorld.com many, many times before, and we dig his signature Martin guitar.

A few weeks ago, Limp Bizkit released a new song, “Endless Slaughter,” for free download via their website.

Now they've released an official music video for the track.

Check it out below and let us know what you think in the comments or on Facebook!

Limp Bizkit have released a new song, "Endless Slaughter," which is available as a free download over at their official website.

Listen to the track below (while you're watching the lyric video) and let us know what you think in the comments or on Facebook!

It turns out Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is a film director. Who knew?

Below, check out a short film, The Truth, which was directed by Durst, who also stars as Evan Jealous, a motivational speaker/spiritual leader who enjoys hitting people with chairs.

Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland—yes, that's Wes Borland—appears midway in the film to receive some "healing."

You can watch the entire 30-minute film or skip directly to 22:50 to catch the Durst/Borland face smash.

Black Light Burns, the Los Angeles-based quartet fronted by Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, released their sophomore album, The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall, August 13 via Rocket Science/THC Records.

Amid preparation for a fall tour with Psychostick and The Witch Was Right, Borland sat down to discuss the new album, gear, sonic experimentation and a lot more.

GUITAR WORLD: Given your history in visual arts, does music travel similarly through your mind? When writing and producing, what do you see? Math and numbers? Colors and movement?

First, I’m sort of thinking about a lot of different things that have happened in my life as well as different cinematic landscapes or ideas. I’ll think about a lot of things I’ve seen recently, because I am a painter too. I’m always looking at other artists and trying to get inspired by different things. I just collect images from clippings from magazines or whatever.

I’ll sort of think about all of these things and start writing, and I think a lot of these visuals inspire me to think about what those images would sound like. Like, I know how it looks, but how does it sound? And I do that a lot as far as trying to paint things that I hear and make music that I see, I guess.

They kind of go back and forth and cross over into each other. It’s never about math. Ever. I’ve never really been schooled in music theory. I’m a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it’s more unique that some other people. I’m not a shredder, and I’ve never aspired to be a virtuoso player. I’ve always wanted to be a songwriter and a storyteller and somebody who conveys a feeling to the listener or the viewer.

As Black Light Burns and Limp Bizkit progress, do you find it more difficult to keep stylistic differences separate?

Not really, especially because they’re progressing further and further away from each other all the time. I feel like Limp Bizkit is going in a direction that allows me to access some wild and experimental elements of myself, but it is primarily aggressive hip-hop/rock/pop music. The feeling of it is more of a party and is, musically, how I’d spend my Saturday night [laughs].

Like if I was with a bunch of people in Manhattan that wanted to go bar-hopping, it’s something I would normally do with Limp Bizkit, but it’s more of a light-hearted good time, whereas with Black Like Burns it’s more so like opening my chest up and vomiting out all of my emotions.

I won’t say Black Light is completely a mourning experience. It’s not a funeral. Our shows are definitely fun, and we are light-hearted about having a good time as far as when we play and put 100 percent into all of our shows. It’s still born out of despair and emotion. That’s the heart of it, and our albums get more and more experimental all the time.

I don’t think it’s hard; I think the first record, Cruel Melody, overlapped a bit with Limp Bizkit, but now if I write something that’s more experimental, I’ll pitch it to Black Light. The same goes for Limp Bizkit if I write something that is a bit more poppy and commercial sounding. Now they are just getting further and further apart.

To have people react to a song and just know it is so flooring. It is such an incredible feeling. It never gets old, either. Even with really old songs with Bizkit. We could be performing some of the first songs we’ve ever written together in front of an audience and have them react, and they’re still like, “Wow.” I’m sick of the song, but they make me not sick of it, you know? It’s like watching one of your favorite movies with someone who has never seen it before.

When playing any song in front of an audience, you’re watching them experience it, and it changes. In a lot of ways, it’s almost like the music is just the background buzz to what’s happening between you and the audience in the room.

What different guitars, amps, effects and various instruments were used for the recording of The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall?

We used a 1964 Gibson Thunderbird bass and an Ovation Magnum II, which is one of the only good things Ovation has ever done as a company, and they stopped doing it. It’s a really weird-looking bass, but it’s got a unique sound, and I just love them for some reason. They are really weird, and I guess they were just a failure at the time. I tend to gravitate toward instruments that were failures and that they stopped making because they don’t sound like a PRS or Les Paul. It’s something so different.

For the guitars, I think it was mostly Telecasters for the neck pickup position, a Hagstrom 3, an old Teisco Japanese Jaguar sort of guitar that sounds really nuts and has a bunch of electronic problems but it's really rowdy. I really wanted to make a record that was heavy but not metal. I wanted a lot the heaviness to be in the bass and have the guitars be more of a bite-y rock sound. I think that worked out.

We used a lot of little amps, a bunch of 10-inch-speaker Epiphone and Gibson amps as well as a couple Fender amps. We were using a lot of Zvex pedals that are just kind of unruly and have a bunch of different types of fuzz. We were just experimenting a lot and chaining a bunch of stuff together. One pedal that was really cool was a green pedal called the Bag of Dicks. It actually comes in a paper bag [laughs].

I think I found it at Tour Supply in LA. That thing just generates constant noise if you’re not playing through it. It only had two knobs, gain and volume, but somehow it just had all of these different positions you could put them in that just did terrible things. It was just like, “Why is that happening?” and “I don’t know why it’s happening, but hit record!”

There was a lot of that kind of stuff going on as far as experimentation, but it was really fun. A lot of it is improvised, even to the point of sampling circuit bent toys. We were careful about experimenting. It was controlled and edited. It wasn’t like we said, “Oh, we’re gonna go fart in a buck and record it.”

Many people will argue that anyone can pick up an instrument and learn how to play. You've always incorporated visual aesthetics and unconventionality into your music. How would your differentiate an artist from a musician?

I think there are people who aren’t artists who are musicians, and I think there are people who aren’t musicians that are artists. There are people who are both, but I don’t feel like there are things that are created from musicians. There are people who are amazing violinists, but they don’t really write very much. Or when they do write it all falls into these parameters that they’ve been taught -- sequences. It’s the mathematical thing we talked about. Musicians can tend to get mathematical and just go, “Here you go. Sounds great.”

That works well for scoring film, but I think that a lot of those people don’t have a screw loose, and maybe that’s the difference. Maybe artists have something inherently wrong with their brains and musicians don’t. Artists have this handicap [laughs], and that’s what makes them somehow digest things and spit them out in a way that only makes sense to some people.

Keep up with Black Light Burns at their official website and Facebook page.

Seemingly against all odds, Limp Bizkit have been everywhere in the music news these past few weeks after signing with hip-hop label Cash Money Records and announcing the impending release of a new song with Lil Wayne.

In a new interview with Billboard, Bizkit frontman Fred Durst opened up about the band's future plans, including a new EP that should show off the heavier side of the Limp Bizkit's music. In fact, he's calls the new record -- which will likely be an EP -- "the heaviest, most crazy metal record of all time." The set title for the collection is The Unquestionable Truth, Part 2.

"That will service our core and counter balance these big, fat, ginormous hip-rock songs we're going to do" he told Billboard. "We're gonna give out some mayhem and madness...to those people who really lean that way with us."

You can read more here.

Limp Bizkit are currently putting the finishing touches on their track with Lil Wayne, titled "Ready to Go," which will likely be released as a free download.

Nu-metallers Limp Bizkit have posted the title track to their forthcoming sixth studio album, Gold Cobra, which you can hear below. The album is the band's first new batch of original tracks since 2005's The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1).

"Gold Cobra" marks the second track from the new album to appear online, after Bizkit frontman Fred Durst posted the track "Shotgun" last month.

Durst doesn't seem to be worried at all about the possibility of the album, which is out June 28, leaking in advance, saying on his Twitter: "Hell no! It's inevitable. Just make sure you turn it up!"

Gold Cobra - Album Version by indylimpfan

• Former Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, whose bizarre makeup and outfits and freaky contact lenses made him a frequent Guitar World photo subject in the Nineties, is taking on the role of frontman in his new group, Black Light Burns. The debut album from Black Light Burns, Cruel Melody, will be released on June 5 via producer Ross Robinson’s new label, I AM: WOLFPACK.
• The following is the official Black Light Burns press release:

He’s been a) an underground metal mercenary, abetting the likes of brainy young upstarts From First to Last and He Is Legend, b) a fearless visual artist whose unsettling images will appear on his forthcoming CD and most famously c) the chameleonic lead guitarist for Limp Bizkit, who have sold over 30 million records worldwide. Now, for Wes Borland’s next trick, he’s putting on the guise of frontman, leading both a studio and live supergroup to even darker depths as Black Light Burns. And the new look suits him well.

Click here to check out Wes' uncensored CD artwork!

Click here to see more uncensored CD artwork!

Borland has flirted with his big post-LB breakthrough on and off over the last five years, first with the idiosyncratic Big Dumb Face, then with his brother Scott in Eat the Day before hooking up with bassist Danny Lohner (Nine Inch Nails) and drummer Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle) in proto-industrial powerhouse the Damning Well, whose crushing Underworld soundtrack contribution “Awakening” featured Richard Patrick (Filter, Army of Anyone) on vocals. Now Borland has taken Lohner, Freese and sound designer Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv) to super-producer Ross Robinson’s upstart I AM: WOLFPACK label and delivered Black Light Burns’ harrowing debut, Cruel Melody, 180 degrees from what you think you know about the eccentric axeman. From the post-Ramones surf rock freakout of opener “Mesopotamia” and the slow-build confessional spit of “I Have a Need” to the introspective, epic closing tandem “New Hunger” and “I Am Where It Takes Me” (the latter featuring the smoky siren call of Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano), Cruel Melody is one hell of a curveball.

“For the most part, [the record’s] more about melody,” Borland says. “It’s a big drums record, because Josh Freese goes bananas. A lot of it was thought about in terms of beats and attacking the songs beatwise. And the riff kind of followed second to that, if it was appropriate. “The record starts real aggressively, but toward the middle it gets a little more hurtful and hurting, lyrically, trying to express painful feelings, but still in an aggressive way. Then it kind of opens up in the end. And that was the purpose: to attack, then explain, then release and be done with it.”

Cruel Melody was originally going to be an esoteric, dirge-heavy solo project with a variety of singers, but as Borland started writing heavier material, he finally decided to take the reins behind the mike. It didn’t hurt that he got inspiration not only from Lohner, who doubled as the album’s producer, but Lohner’s famous former employer.
“I was talking to Trent Reznor, playing him these tracks in their infancy,” Borland remembers. “And he said, ‘You’re singing like somebody’s sleeping in the next room. You should try to open that up.’ You know, it’s really easy to do cool electronic music that’s instrumental and put soft vocals over it, but it’s a lot harder to write actual songs and have them hit people.”

With Cruel Melody locked and loaded, Borland’s planning an evocative new onstage persona for Black Light’s maiden voyage, boasting a live band with guitarist Nick Annis (Seether), drummer Marshal Kirpatric (Today Is the Day, the Esoteric) and, for now, a laptop to wreak ambient havoc. (“Screw it,” he laughs, “there’s a computer in the band.”) In the interim, he’s just striving to perfect his unique approach to making art.
“The paintings and the music kind of chase one another, trying to keep up with some other third element that’s the idea,” Borland considers. “It’s almost like when you see a little flash in the corner of your eye and you’re not sure what it was. My music and visual art is me trying to look really fast to see what that third thing was. I’m always trying to hit this place that gives me some satisfaction.”