Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland Says Deftones’ Renouncing Nü-Metal Was ‘Right Move’

Limp Bizkit may have reaped big success thanks to the nü-metal crazy of the late 90s. However, Wes Borland recently said that the Deftones’ decision to walk away from the genre they helped pioneer was the “right move.”

“The Deftones really tried to separate themselves from everything, which was the right move, for sure,” the Limp Bizkit guitarist said in a recently released episode of Dean Delray’s Let There Be Talk. “Because they were able to maintain longevity.”

While the Deftones were part of the early days of nü-metal, they decided to abandon the sound and not tour with the bands in that scene. This led to releasing a catalog of well-received and critically acclaimed music, including their latest, Ohms.

Meanwhile, Limp Bizkit stayed in the genre but has only released one album in 17 years. When asked if the band would be able to rise to that occasion again, Borland said:

“I can’t imagine it would. I don’t really have any expectations of it because I’ve found that I have no idea what people like and don’t. I do this thing all the time where I’m like, ‘Oh, that band is gonna be huge but what do I know! Or that band’s never gonna do anything, or nobody’s gonna like that movie.’

And I always go, ‘But what do I know…’ Because I’m wrong all the time, I have absolutely no idea what’s gonna work and what doesn’t. Because I’m not trying to make anything work, I’m not looking at hits, I’m doing what’s inspiring to me. And if it happens to connect with people – great.

But I’m not in a studio trying to cook up with some producers like what’s going to be the next big thing. I mean, I’m 42, it would be embarrassing for me to try to be cooking up what the next big thing was.”

Borland did say that they still play a few shows a year, and there’s an album that they’ve been working on for a while that isn’t “going to get finished anytime soon.”

“It’s been a bunch of songs that have been floating around for four years now,” he said, “and little by little, stuff gets added to it. But I think that we’re all into such different stuff that making a Limp Bizkit record is kind of difficult.”

He also added, “So what’s the carrot for us to write to a new record at this point – if we’re all interested in doing other music anyway…? If it happens, it will happen at some point.”

Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst has been laying low but did say in a Metal Hammer interview in August that the band members weren’t friends. “I actually met Wes for the first time at our first gig. We never took time to consider friendships, that wasn’t part of it. It was just about the magic that happened when we were together … none of us were ever friends.”

You can hear the full Let There Be Talk episode with Wes Borland below.