Wesley Louden Borland (born
February 7, 1975 in Richmond, Virginia
), better known as Wes Borland, is
an American musician, best known as the guitarist for the band Limp
Bizkit.
He has been in several other bands, including
The Damning Well, Goatslayer and
Big Dumb Face. He also recorded on
From First to Last's
Heroine album in 2006, and served as
bass guitarist for the band's subsequent tour. Borland was well
known for his bizarre stage appearance, and for his fondness of
musical artists that differed greatly from the musical tastes of
his bandmates in Limp Bizkit. Borland performed in
Black Light Burns, in which he wrote most
of the music and sang. As of 2009, Borland has rejoined Limp
Bizkit.
Biography
Early years
Borland's
family moved from Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida
where his father took a pastoral job at a Presbyterian Church. In Florida,
Borland met bassist
Sam
Rivers, but the two did not get along due to rivalries between
local bands. He went to school with
John Otto.
He spent his summers
in Montreat, North
Carolina
, working in the sound booth for Montreat conference center, a
Presbyterian Church
institution. When Limp Bizkit was looking for a guitarist,
John Otto threw out his name, stating he was more of an artist than
a guitarist, but the band decided he'd be worthwhile for the
position. In one of these bands, Borland sang and played guitar but
didn't use a guitar pick. He would only play guitar using the two
hand tapping style of guitar playing that he would go on to use in
Limp Bizkit songs such as "Stalemate", "Sour", "Re-Arranged" and
"Indigo Flow".
Fred Durst left to Philadelphia for a
short while, leaving the others to speak to Wes and see if he'd
join the band. Borland accepted, and the three practiced, while
keeping in touch with Durst over the phone. Later Durst came back
to Jacksonville, and the band had a show scheduled. Durst and
Borland met for the first time and played their first show together
30 minutes later. On stage, Borland was known for his eccentricity,
frequently wearing elaborate face paint and black-tinted
contact lenses.
In the very early stages of Limp Bizkit, Borland's brother and
future Eat the Day bandmate
Scott
Borland played keyboards, but with the early inclusion of
DJ Lethal, the band eventually became a
success. Scott played with Limp Bizkit as a session keyboard player
on Limp Bizkit's first three releases, until Borland quit in 2001,
which is when the two brothers formed
Eat
the Day.
Leaving Limp Bizkit
On October 12, 2001, Borland left Limp Bizkit because, he claims,
the band limited his ability to express himself artistically.
Before leaving Bizkit he formed the band
Big Dumb Face as an outlet for his creativity.
Big Dumb Face has since been put to the side. Borland then started
the band Eat the Day with his brother,
Scott Borland. Eat The Day was described as
heavy and dramatic, with Borland pushing the envelope of his heavy
and soft playing within epic, normally over five minute song
lengths.
Borland and his brother Scott were initially going to both be the
lead vocalists to avoid the stigmas associated with singular
frontmen, but both Borlands felt their guitar playing was starting
to suffer due to having to contribute vocals at the same time. They
first tried fixing this with going through Interscope Records'
demos to find a singer, only to find nobody they were satisfied
with. During this period of Eat the Day, the band's website
released several mp3s with no vocal tracks, asking for interested
vocalists to record over the tracks and submit their recordings as
an audition to front the band. The songs "Beeblicowcarapis",
"dAdA", and "Taste My Gun" were initially released (and still are
available via the internet) as their full length selves, but later,
Eat the Day only put up the beginning portions of the songs to have
vocalists to sing over. This gesture was similar to the Limp Bizkit
national guitarist audition after Borland left the band, and proved
to be ultimately
futile, other than
showcasing what the ultimate sound of the project could have
become. The members of Eat The Day instead decided to take a small
break from the project and focus on other things to see if a
vocalist would naturally pop up. Borland also played bass for the
band dobmyer for a short time.
During this down period, Borland began production on his solo album
with friend and producer
Danny Lohner
of
Nine Inch Nails' fame. He was
also featured twice on the
Underworld soundtrack: once on a
remix version of the
A Perfect
Circle song "Weak and Powerless" and another time on the song
"The Awakening" with a
supergroup
of sorts called The Damning Well. The group features Wes Borland on
guitars, Danny Lohner on bass,
Richard
Patrick on vocals and
Josh Freese on
drums. It was also revealed by Borland himself that during this
time, he turned down the offer to join
A Perfect Circle as the second guitarist
alongside band founder/songwriter
Billy
Howerdel in order to focus on
Eat The
Day. In fall of 2003, it was announced that Eat The Day had
found an unnamed vocalist. It turned out to be Richard Patrick of
Filter and Nine Inch Nails fame. With
producer
Bob Ezrin at the helm, material
for Eat The Day and The Damning Well merged, as did the bands, but
Patrick had a falling out with the whole camp. This was announced
via Eat The Day's website in fall of 2003/early 2004, as did the
announcement that Eat The Day and The Damning Well had either split
permanently or gone on hiatus. The conclusion of this post stated
Borland's beginning stages of creating a new, band driven solo
record with Danny Lohner,
Josh Freese,
Josh Eustis, and
John Bates.
In late 2003, Borland co-produced and played guitar on several
songs on
Legion of Boom, the
third studio album by electronic musicians
The Crystal Method, released in January
2004. The tracks he worked on were "Broken Glass", "Weapons of Mass
Distortion" (also a Japanese bonus track "Weapons of Mad
Destruction" featuring Kyono from
The Mad Capsule Markets) and the
lead single "Born Too Slow". "Born Too Slow" featured former
Kyuss frontman
John Garcia on vocals.
Rejoining Limp Bizkit
Around August, 2004, Wes Borland rejoined Limp Bizkit. He worked on
their latest album, released in the form of an EP concept album,
titled
The
Unquestionable Truth , released on May 3, 2005; produced
by
Ross Robinson and Limp
Bizkit.
Black Light Burns
Borland declared himself a full time member of his new project,
Black Light Burns, indicating a
second departure from Limp Bizkit. Borland and Danny Lohner also
contributed guitar parts and instrumentals to
Rob Zombie's album,
Educated Horses, only to not have their
contributions on the record. In late 2005, Wes played all the bass
on the
post-hardcore band
From First to Last's second full length
album
Heroine (after
bassist Jon Weisberg left the band), with whom he also toured for
several tours afterward. He has since left the band as new bassist
Matt Manning stepped up to play with From First to last. Borland
played all the bass track on the CD, but co wrote a song with the
band called "Save Us" which is a B side to the Heroine album that
has been recently posted on the bands
Myspace.
Black Light Burns is an industrial metal band featuring members of
Borland's previous band The Damning Well, with Borland this time on
vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards and programming, Danny Lohner on
guitar, bass, keyboards, programming (but is sparingly using these
instruments on the record, as he is mainly BLB's producer), Josh
Eustis (from
Telefon Tel Aviv) on
programming, keys and Josh Freese on drums. The project evolved
from Borland's initial attempts at writing a solo effort, but
according to Borland, now includes that solo material, material
from Eat The Day, material from The Damning Well, and material from
an ambient solo record that Borland wrote during his time in Eat
The Day that still remains unreleased. Guests on the album include
Carina Round, Limp Bizkit bassist
Sam Rivers, From First to Last
frontman Sonny Moore, and
Johnette
Napolitano of
Concrete Blonde.
Borland announced on February 3, 2007 that Black Light Burns will
be signed to the new record label of
Ross
Robinson called I AM: WOLFPACK. A June 5, 2007 release for the
CD was planned, and in the meantime Borland would head to various
regions in the Middle East for scheduled guitar clinics for his
Yamaha signature guitar, and Black Light Burns would be rehearsing
for a tour starting around summer as well.
Borland toured with From First To Last roughly since early 2006. He
announced plans for a Fall 2006 tour that never went through due to
Black Light Burns needing to find a new record label after Borland
left Geffen Records. Borland has discussed plans to write and
perform on the next From First To Last album, but he left the band
due to Black Light Burns' busy schedule started to pick up, leaving
no room for work with From First to Last.
In 2007, Borland appeared on select tracks on
Worse Than a Fairy Tale, by
Colorado band
Drop Dead,
Gorgeous. Both artists are on Ross Robinson's I AM:WOLFPACK
label.
Black Light Burns' lineup has undergone some changes. As recently
as 2008, the band consisted of Borland on vocals/guitar, Nick Annis
on guitar/backup vocals, Sean Fetterman on bass/backup vocals, and
Marshal Kilpatric on drums. In early 2009, Fetterman left due to
reasons undisclosed by the band and was replaced by the band's
guitar tech, Dennis "Junior" Sanders.
Fear and The Nervous System
Fear and the Nervous
System is an
experimental/
industrial rock band formed in 2008,
consisting of vocalist and guitarist
James
"Munky" Shaffer of
Korn, bassist
Billy Gould of
Faith No
More, drummer
Brooks Wackerman
of
Bad Religion,
programmer and guitarist
Leopold Ross of
Error and
IO Echo, and
keyboardist and programmer
Zac Baird,
previously heard on Korn's untitled album and during their live
shows. Wes Borland also worked closely with experimental gothic
keyboardist Shawn Lowry. Wes Borland contributed on two tracks for
the project and also created the artwork for the CD. However in a
recent message on the bands Myspace page James Shaffer said that
the two tracks Wes contributed to did not make the final cut for
the album.
Marilyn Manson
At a press
conference in Seoul
, South Korea
, Marilyn Manson
announced that Borland had joined the band as their live
guitarist. He played only two shows with Manson, the first
at the 2008 ETP Festival in Korea, and the second in Los Angeles
for a
Hot Topic manager's meeting. Borland
left the band after re-uniting with
Limp
Bizkit in 2009 .
Limp Bizkit reunited
Borland rejoined Limp Bizkit on the 12th of February 2009. The
decision came six days after he attacked the bands comeback plans
and Durst's songwriting skills; claiming he had more freedom with
his current band Black Light Burns.
A statement was released by the band, which said:
Playing style
As Limp Bizkit's guitarist, on their first album,
Three Dollar Bill, Yall$,
Borland would cover much ground. Some guitar parts were inspired by
thrash metal with harmonic usage
inspired by
industrial music,
whereas other parts were meant to sound like strange noises and
sounds, some were soft and beautiful jazzy melodies and the songs
themselves were somewhat progressive, as there were traditional
song-structures mixed with more experimental ideas.
On the subsequent hit record,
Significant Other, Borland's playing
became slower with increased emphasis on groove and heaviness, with
more traditional song structures used. On the third Limp Bizkit
release,
Chocolate
Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, Borland's playing
became more eclectic, combining the prior elements of heaviness and
traditional structure with playing big, complex
guitar chords not normally played in metal
music before then.
On the
The
Unquestionable Truth , recorded five years later, featured
some of his most aggressive guitar work ever released, using
distortion through most of the album and
putting all of his trademark
effect
pedals to rest, instead focusing on heavy riffing,
metal tremolo
picking and
palm mute/release
techniques. However, in
Black Light
Burns, Borland's guitar playing is at its most eclectic.
Borland's metal, electronic, jazz, indie rock, soft, progressive
influences come through, and the songs take unexpected turns all
throughout.
Wes played
Ibanez 7 string guitars with Limp
Bizkit and later used
Paul Reed
Smith guitars. He plays a custom 4 string AX series
Ibanez on songs "Nookie", "Full Nelson", "The One",
and "Stalemate". He tuned his 7 strings to [Low to High] Db Gb B E
Ab Db Db and tuned his 4 string to [Low to High] F# F# B E, with
the lowest F# string being a bass guitar string, with that lowest
F# being one whole octave below the preceding F# string.
Borland told crowds at his guitar clinics in the middle east and
Total Guitar magazine that he considers
himself more a songwriter/rhythm guitarist than a lead guitarist,
saying that he never got into shredder bands or jazz fusion
artists. He says his two hand tapping technique was inspired
somewhat by
Les Claypool of
Primus and the rhythmic nature of his bass
playing, and not so much from the lead guitar craze of the 1980s.
However, he has incorporated lead guitar into his music after
leaving Limp Bizkit from time to time.
Personal
He and ex-wife Heather McMillan were married on April 10, 1998 but
later divorced. He has been married to his current wife, Anna
Borland, since 2006.
Borland is not only known for his live stage costume getups, he has
also handled album art during his stint in Limp Bizkit. Likewise,
he has provided the album art for both of the Black Light Burns
releases. He has been working to get an art gallery open to display
his paintings.
Borland established a MySpace account displaying several of his
paintings. He has posted ambient musical pieces that were written
after the
Black Light Burns debut
album
Cruel Melody was
completed.
Equipment
During his time in Limp Bizkit, Borland was endorsed by
Ibanez and almost exclusively used their guitars in
recordings and live performances. The guitars'
piezo system allowed him to change from
electric to acoustic sounds with the flick of a switch. After
leaving Limp Bizkit, Borland also switched from Ibanez guitars to
Yamaha, which are currently marketing a Wes
Borland signature guitar called the CV820 WB. He also retired his
Roland/Mesa Boogie amplifiers and currently uses Orange Amplifiers
in live performances.
Guitars
Current guitars:
Retired guitars:
Effects
Amplifiers
Current amplifiers:
Retired amplifers:
Discography
References
Notes
- http://www.angelfire.com/rock/e4/combichrist.html
-
http://news.superiorpics.com/2009/02/20/BORLAND_DEFENDS_LIMP_BIZKIT_REUNION.html
- http://www.limpbizkit.com/
- http://www.angelfire.com/rock/rapcore/equip.htm
- http://guitargeek.com/rigview/261/
-
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/interviews/interviews/wes_borland_no_rules_exist_in_black_light_burns.html
- UberProAudio - Wes Borland Guitar Gear Rig and
Equipment
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