Epic live shows, celebrity love-ins and Dad Vibes-Limp Bizkit are officially one of metal’s biggest bands once more. This is the story of…

WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS

GETTY/JIM DYSON

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 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.