They used to do it all for the nookie, but now Limp Bizkit are all about the love. That much was abundantly clear on March 17, 2024, at Lollapalooza Argentina. “Is everybody happy?” singer Fred Durst asks, surveying a 100,000-strong crowd who seem down with the fact that he’s wearing the kind of garish, multicoloured tracksuit once the preserve of 1980s kids TV presenter Timmy Mallett. He soon gets his response. As Limp Bizkit tear into set closer Break Stuff, the audience go ballistic, bellowing the lyrics so loudly it drowns out Fred as a sea of bodies bounce and mosh as far as the eye can see. Footage of the craziness soon goes viral, notching up more than a million views in 24 hours.
Nearly a quarter of a century after their nu metal heyday, that Lollapalooza performance proved that Limp Bizkit were one of metal’s hottest bands once again. It’s an unlikely second act, and one that would once have seemed unthinkable. At the turn of the millennium, Limp Bizkit were the biggest nu metal band on the planet, thanks to the massive success of their first three albums, 1997’s Three Dollar Bill, Y’All, 1999’s Significant Other and 2000’s Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water.
There were album launch parties at the Playboy Mansion, promo videos shot on top of The World Trade Center, and Mission: Impossible theme songs. But it couldn’t last. Limp Bizkit – and Fred in particular – became the whipping boys for a scene deemed obnoxious, misogynistic and artistically bereft. Guitarist Wes Borland quit in 2001, done with the circus that surrounded the band.
Their fourth record, 2003’s critically mauled Results May Vary, was a relative commercial flop. At a gig supporting Metallica in Chicago in 2003, Fred was heckled offstage by a hostile audience after just six songs. They reunited with Wes for 2005’s The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) EP, but their glory days seemed to be behind them.
That makes their current turnaround remarkable. While resurgent interest in nu metal, and the nostalgia that comes with it, has undoubtedly played a part, that doesn’t fully account for the fervour from fans who weren’t around for them first time around. In 2023, Fred appeared on the Club Random podcast, hosted by veteran comedian and TV presenter Bill Maher.
“These days, every night I’ll say, ‘How many people is it your first time seeing Limp Bizkit?’ The whole place raises their hand,” the singer told Bill. “‘How many people are under 30 years old?’ The whole place raises their hand… It’s young people who are reacting to the material.”
For Spookz, frontman with masked nu metal revivalists and former Limp Bizkit support act Blackgold, it’s a matter of timing.
“It’s a generational thing,” he tells Hammer. “The gap is the perfect amount now for the kids just getting into music for their parents to be like, ‘When I was young, these guys were sick’, and put them on in the car.”
Ross Robinson, the legendary, game-changing producer who worked with the band on Three Dollar Bill, Y’All, has a simpler explanation.
“The reason they’re so popular again today is the reason they blew up in the first place: because they’re fucking incredible,” he says. “They’re a freaking cocktail of pure fire and creativity.”
The resurrection of Limp Bizkit has been a decade in the making. The band reunited in 2009 following a three-year hiatus, playing a blinder of a set at that year’s Download festival in front of a rabid crowd chanting their name. 2011’s comeback album, Gold Cobra, might have been clunky and forgettable, but their status as a live draw continued to build, especially in Europe, where they became semi-regular festival fixtures.
A much-trumpeted sixth album, Stampede Of The Disco Elephants, was constantly delayed, but that didn’t matter. Limp Bizkit had well and truly come back in from the cold, cracking open the door for the return of nu metal in the process.
The Durstnaissance was rubber-stamped in 2021 with the release of Dad Vibes, their first new song in seven years. It found Fred fully leaning into the song’s title: baggy t-shirts and baseball caps were out, replaced by middle age-appropriate grey slacks, grey wig and handlebar moustache, red aviator shades, and, at one gig in Tampa, Florida in 2022, a comfy chair in the middle of the stage.
This was a funnier, more self-aware Fred Durst, one willing to embrace his age and status as a nu metal dad with only the barest whiff of irony. “It’s so Limp Bizkit to have a song about being a cool dad, but that’s something that only Fred would think of,” says Zakk Cervini, who produced Dad Vibes and parent album Still Sucks, which grew out of the long-gestating Stampede Of The Disco Elephants.
“Bands I work with that were young 10 years ago are all having kids now. [Rage Against The Machine guitarist] Tom Morello was like, ‘Oh, you produced Dad Vibes? I do a radio show, and every Father’s Day we play that song, that’s one of my favourite songs.’”
Released on Halloween 2021 with little advance fanfare, the 12-song, 32-minute Still Sucks may not have had the sales or widespread cultural impact of Significant Other or Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water, but old- and newschool Bizkit fans lapped it up.
Since then, the love for the band has only intensified. Limp Bizkit’s triumphant appearance at 2024’s Download festival was widely held up as the best of the weekend, while celebrity fan Ed Sheeran joined the band onstage at last year’s Pinkpop festival for a duet on their cover of The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes (a collab Fred dubbed ‘Fred Sheeran’ on Instagram).
It’s not just old-school fans and early-2000s nostalgists who are behind this resurgence in interest. Gen Z has latched onto the sound and aesthetics of nu metal, with TikTok and social media allowing younger fans to enjoy Bizkit without the baggage and bias that clung to them in the early 2000s. Zakk Cervini draws parallels between the band and current pop superstars.
“When I look at artists like Charli XCX or Billie Eilish, their aesthetics are baggy pants and bright green,” he says. “It’s so colourful and outlandish. It’s meant to be a party.”
The Fred Durst of the 2020s is a world away from the Fred Durst of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, sporting an ever-present red baseball cap, he was one of the main reasons Limp Bizkit were held in contempt in certain quarters. Whether it was his obnoxious swagger – embodied by the band’s infamous appearance at the Woodstock ’99 festival – or the spats he found himself embroiled in with everyone from Eminem to Corey Taylor (Fred described Slipknot fans as “a bunch of fat, ugly kids”), for many he encapsulated the worst aspects of nu metal.
He’s since insisted that his obnoxious persona was a character that got out of hand. He subsequently spoke of being bullied in his youth, and that Limp Bizkit were his chance to release that residual aggression and frustration.
“When I became that Tyler Durden guy, there were just no rules,” he told Metal Hammer in 2014, referencing Brad Pitt’s provocative character in the 1999 film Fight Club. “I was carrying this giant person behind me on a chain…. I can’t get away from it and that persona ate me up.”
These days, Fred cuts a very different character. Onstage, he’s full of smiles and grateful thanks. It feels like he’s more likely to make you a cuppa and a biscuit than start a riot or shit-talk the competition.
“I think the journey of going up and down and up and down makes any artist humble, and he’s got such humble swag when he’s onstage,” says Blackgold’s Spookz. “He makes you feel like you’re with your best mate. He’s so grateful that it’s come back around.”
This humility extends to giving a hand-up to a new generation of bands. As well as Blackgold, Limp Bizkit have taken metalcore crew Dying Wish, rave-metal provocateurs Wargasm and hardcore newcomers Scowl out on tour with them. In many cases, he handpicks the band, contacting them directly himself.
“He saw us on TikTok and ended up in our DMs,” says Spookz. “If he hears a new band and he thinks they’re sick, he’s like, ‘I’m going to take you on tour, I’m going to help you.’ Take nothing for it. No reason. That’s just what he’s like.”
Fred Durst’s public image isn’t the only thing that has been misunderstood over the years. According to both Ross Robinson and Zakk Cervini, his creative skills have been overlooked and underappreciated.
“We put together nine songs from scratch in seven days at pre-production for the first record,” recalls Ross of working on Three Dollar Bill, Y’All. “I’ve never experienced that level of creativity my whole career. Idea after idea after idea, and they were all really good.”
Zakk says that was the case on Still Sucks too. The producer describes his time working with the band as a series of “lightning in a bottle” moments. “Fred is one of the most talented people that I’ve ever met in my entire life. His voice is just so iconic and so signature. With a lot of artists, you have to work to make them sound the way they sound, but Fred jumps on the mic and it automatically sounds sick.”
Recording the album’s opening track, Out Of Style, was a case in point. “Fred was like, ‘All right, I got my lyrics. I’m going to lay it down,’” says Zakk. “He recorded the entire song staring me in the face with the mic a foot away from me. It was this crazy hour of him in my face, screaming at me.”
It helps that the instability that has plagued the band has calmed down in recent years. Wes Borland has quit the band on two separate occasions, returning both times, while DJ Lethal and bassist Sam Rivers have both left and returned to the band since 2012. The current line-up – also the band’s classic line-up – has been together since 2019.
“Fred is there for his dudes ’til death,” says Ross Robinson. That renewed sense of camaraderie is palpable on Still Sucks.
“I remember Fred bouncing ideas off of Sam back and forth being just like, ‘Do you like this? Am I going too far on this? Is this good?’” says Zakk. “Sam would keep everybody grounded. Then Lethal would just come in with all his sounds and all his turntables and they’re like, ‘Does it sound too dated?’ To me, that sounds fresh. For so many people of my generation, that’s a new thing for them.”
For Ross Robinson, Limp Bizkit’s current popularity is no surprise. It all goes back to the music. “It’s the beat, sense of song and choruses,” he says. “I like to say, ‘When we go in the studio, we are going to build a fucking pyramid – something that lasts forever.’ I knew the first Limp Bizkit record was going to do something when I put the first CD I got from mastering in my Toyota 4Runner. I pinned it wide open, sliding around corners, catching a little air, just in the dirt doing donuts with the music, full blast, and it matched perfectly. I get chills even today when I hear it.”
The excitement that surrounded Limp Bizkit may have come and gone over the years, but the current love for them is comparable to that of the original nu metal era. Their ongoing (and self-deprecatingly titled) Loserville tour hits the UK and Ireland in March, while they’re reportedly back in the studio recording the follow-up to Still Sucks.
The nu metal revival shows no sign of abating either. With 90s contemporaries Korn set to headline this year’s Download festival, it’s not unthinkable that Limp Bizkit could do the same in 2026. It’s not clear how surprised Fred is by the success of his band’s second act. By the mid-2000s, it looked like they were over and done, a hangover of the nu metal years.
Two decades on, they’ve clawed their way back to the top against all the odds. But then maybe this was all part of Fred Durst’s plan.
“I wanted to pull back and see what our music could do through a noisy world,” said Fred in 2023. “How do you rise above the noise? And luckily, I’m so grateful, there’s a resurgence and it’s happening.”
Limp Bizkit’s Loserville tour continues in Birmingham on March 13. Limp Bizkit play Reading and Leeds Festivals in August.
