Wes Borland is known best for his days in Limp Bizkit, but the era of “Nookie” is something he’d rather leave behind. As the lead guitarist in Limp Bizkit, Borland said the band got too caught up in the luxury of success and eventually began to suffer from “tunnel vision.” After more than a few break-ups and reunions with the band, he finally decided to go in a musical direction where he would not be pressured to make another top-selling single.
Now taking on multiple duties (guitar, bass, vocals, and a bit of keyboard), Borland is set to unleash his latest band
Black Light Burns. Far from being just a side project, Black Light Burns delivers a mix of industrial, electronica, and straightforward rock that features such studio musicians as
Danny Lohner (long-time collaborator with Nine Inch Nails) and A Perfect Circle’s
Josh Freese.
There is little on the band’s debut Cruel Melody that resembles Borland’s earlier days in Limp Bizkit, and the musician made it clear to UG writer Amy Kelly that he’s giving Black Light Burns his full attention indefinitely.
UG: Your new band delves into everything from gothic rock to electronica, which seems worlds away from your days in Limp Bizkit. Were you writing songs like that during your days in Limp Bizkit?
Wes: Yeah. This is the direction that I’ve wanted to go, and I sort of ended up in Bizkit. That’s what hit and that’s what happened. So that’s sort of where I went until I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I tried to find several other things that I was interested in. My ideas weren’t meeting up with the other people I was working with at that time. I ended up moving into sort of a despair point, where I was like, “I can’t get anything together that I’m happy with.”
Then some friend said, “Why don’t you try Bizkit one more time? Maybe you guys are more mature and can work things out.” I just was like, “All right. I guess you’re right. I guess that’s where I’m supposed to go. That’s the band I’m supposed to be in.” So we tried to make a record again and it didn’t really work. Everybody was back up to their old issues and stuff.
After that, I knew that I would never be able to do that again because it was sort of like 3 strikes and you’re out. We tried it several times and always had the same end result. I knew Black Light Burns was full speed ahead. I had to take all the responsibility of songwriting and doing vocals and everything. I tried to find a singer to work with before, to no avail. Sometimes when a person is put in a situation where it’s do or die, then I have to do. I have to jump. That’s how Black Light Burns got started.
Did you play pretty much all of the guitar, vocals, and bass on your record Cruel Melody?
Yeah, I think I’m singing on every song, except there are 3 guest singers on the record that are doing duet or backup vocals with me. There’s Carina Round, Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde, and Sonny Moore, who is From First To Last’s lead singer. Then there are several string players on the record. Josh Freese from A Perfect Circle played on the drums and Danny Lohner played a little bit of bass and little guitar here and there. As we were making the record, I was playing all the bass and guitar and doing all the vocals, but Danny would have an idea here or there. It was easier for him to just go, “Check it out.” He’d pick up a guitar and away he’d go. I would go, “Oh, okay.”
When I wrote the songs and it came to the details, we would kind of bounce the ball around and try different things. Danny would write some of the keyboard parts here and there that went on top. Between Danny Lohner and I and Josh Eustis, who also did a lot of work for the record, the 3 of us played all the keyboards back and forth. But yeah, I played pretty much all the guitar and bass.
The song “Lie” has more of an industrial sound and the guitar plays a prominent part. Was it composed originally on a guitar or did it take shape a different way?
“Lie” is actually one of the few songs on the record that started lyrics first. All the lyrics were written in about 10 minutes. It was just sort of a song that blew out of me and had to be there. All the lyrics and then the music were just sort of wrapped around it. I already knew what music we needed around “Lie.” So for that song was pretty much all written in my head before we started doing anything.
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| "Sometimes songs just pop in my head almost complete." |
Did that kind of spontaneous creativity happen in any other songs?
For “Cruel Melody.” Also that happened for “Mesopotamia.”
“Mesopotamia” is one of those songs that just jump out at the listener with its repeating chorus. What was the inspiration behind it?
Sometimes songs just pop in my head almost complete. I don’t know how it happens, if it’s like subconscious. That happened at 3 or 4 in the morning when I woke up from a really awful nightmare that I had where I was being attacked by a horde of zombies. Zombies really creep me out in a super-bad way! Like 28 Days Later and all the Romero stuff. Just forget it. I get really grossed out by it, but I love it!
I ended up waking up and I just had “Mesopotamia” in my head. I went into my studio. I have a little studio set up in my dining room in my house. I ran out of the bedroom and ran in there as fast as I could to put like the main parts down.
Which song was the greatest challenge to write on Cruel Melody?
There were a couple songs that didn’t make it on the record that were really just cold that had to be abandoned. Sometimes you’re just trying to bang a square peg through a round hole and it’s not working. Most of the songs that were on the record worked out pretty well. Probably the hardest one was “New Hunger,” which is sort of towards the end of the record.
Did the challenge come from the music or the lyrics?
Musically that was sort of a long process, but it wasn’t really a rush to get finished. That was a long song just because it was sort of a relaxed song to write. If there was ever a point where I was banging my head against the wall! I’m much more like that with paintings than I am with music. I get a lot more aggravated and will scratch my nails across the canvass and knock it over the wall and leave.
I didn’t even realize you were also a painter.
Yeah. If you go to TheBorlandGallery.com you can see all my stuff. There are some really big oil paintings. There is realism, surrealism.
In terms of equipment, have you found a setup that pretty much defines your sound? Or are you someone who experiments with new pedals and amps every chance he gets?
Yeah. I experiment a lot, but if I find things that are key, I keep them and pull them out a lot. On “Cruel Melody,” I have a signature guitar with Yamaha Guitars that I used a lot. But I also used a Fender Starcaster a lot, like a 1976. Then a 60’s Hagstrom III. Live basically the entire song is a Hagstrom III.
For heads I use Diezels on the record, but I use Oranges live. It’s just because Oranges are more travel-friendly than Diezels and they can get kind of a similar tone. But we also use a 60’s Sears Silvertone a lot. We use it a lot with the standby on and with the volume all the way up! It sounds like a battery dying! I ended up using that a lot. I’ve got Echoplexes and we’d use a lot of digital plug-ins on guitars like Trash. I use iZotope Trash because it just destroys sound and makes things sound horrible!
Given the effects that are used on the record, how hard is to maintain that sound in the live show?
We have no keyboard player live. We’re playing with a click and a computer, and we are completely unashamed. It was like any noise that the keyboard made, I don’t feel about having a laptop produce it live. Some of the stuff is just so fast, there’s no way a human could play it. There’s really fast staccato beats on the record that a human being is not going to play – not one that we can afford anyway! We keep it drums, bass, 2 guitars, and vocals. There’s 4 people in the band and a laptop. Everything that we can’t create onstage comes from a computer.
Have you encountered people who are upset that you’re not completely “live” in the traditional sense?
I’m like one of the only people that talk about it, but there are so many bands that do it that are trying to keep it a secret. Even if we had the hugest budget and money was not a factor and we could get the greatest keyboard player in the world, I still probably would go with a laptop. I like the streamline aspect of it. I mean, maybe one day we’ll have somebody else involved on the keyboard, but they would just be running a computer and playing a few extra keyboard parts, too. If anything, I’d like a cellist involved or something like that.
Do you think you’ll have a lot more synth-driven tracks in the future?
On the Black Light Burns’ record, there are about 4 or 5 songs that are synth-driven, and all the rest are guitar rock band songs with a little bit of synth in there. A lot of the songs that you may think are synth-driven are actually guitars that have been sort of miked and destroyed in a way so they sound like that.
I also have found that Black Light Burns has sort of created a moniker that I can have anything I wanted to do out there, from “Mesopotamia” to the ending track on the record “Iodine Sky,” which is like a murky stream that’s like 8 minutes long. Both songs are Black Light Burns songs that are at opposite ends of the spectrum. That was the intent of this band was, to have no rules.
Are you using samples onstage for the cello parts currently?
We’re not playing any of those songs live. We do play “I Am Where It Takes Me” sometimes, which is the song has Johnette on it, but we have our guitar player play all the cello parts. We play the string parts with distortion in the chords. Sometimes we take things out that were cellos or string parts and we replace them with electric guitar or something like that. We do a little bit version of a song.
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| "I haven't talked to Fred in a couple years and I don't really have anything in common with him." |
How different is the chemistry with your new bandmates?
The guys that made the record are different from the live band because Josh Freese and Danny Lohner already had previous commitments and basically helped me make the record. I knew I was going to have to get different people for the live band. The players fell into place really quickly. The drummer’s name is Marshall Kilpatric and he was in a band called The Esoteric. He’s in the band 100 percent, playing on the next record and everything. We’re already writing right now. Freese won’t be involved at all on the next record. The guitar player and bass player are from a local band in Los Angeles called Turn Of The Screw, Nick Annis and Sean Fetterman. They’re fantastic as players. And how they looked and how they are as people, it just perfectly gelled. It just couldn’t be better.
It sounds like you’re far away from the despair state you had back during Limp Bizkit. Are you in Black Light Burns for the long haul?
Right. This was never meant to be a side project since I don’t really have anything for it to be a side project to do! It’s the only thing I’m doing and there are several records to come.
Have you talked to any of the guys in Limp Bizkit recently?
John (Otto), the drummer, was really happy about it. He’s working on some new projects now. Sam (Rivers), the bass player, is actually on one of the tracks on the record. Sam is on the song “I Have A Need,” playing bass on it. I’m still tight with those guys.
I haven’t talked to Fred (Durst) in a couple years and I don’t really have anything in common with him, so there’s no need to talk. But I would love to have John and Sam get involved in something on the side. I’m not sure what it is, but we’ve talked about it several times. We’re trying to get Lethal (DJ for Limp Bizkit) in on the next Black Light Burns’ record to do some programming or something on a couple of songs.
There is a great quote from one of your interviews with Billboard. You compared your work with Limp Bizkit as “knuckleheaded and immature and basically sort of really heavy party music.”
Yeah. I was a lot younger. I think what’s sad is that the intention was a lot different when the band started. It was much more of rock band. I think Fred got affected by the Mercedes Benzes that the executives were driving around and stuff like that. He sort of wanted to be on their team instead of being on our team and wanted to become a record mogul or something like that. That doesn’t work if you’re in a rock band. That’s not what you say! If you were Jay-Z, I could understand how that would be appropriate, but that’s sort of like not the right thing to say – just to let you know! You don’t want to do that. That ended up taking us away from being a rock band.
All emphasis was put on, “We need to write another ‘Nookie.’ We need to write another this. We need to write another that.” So all of the sudden we had tunnel vision and a feeling put on what the band’s aspirations were. We were presented with sort of a carrot in front of us to follow. “You have to follow the carrot. You understand? You have to follow this carrot. We’re going to follow the carrot because we want the money and we want to be successful.”
That sort of took us away from what the original idea was, and that was just to go play really good shows and create a following. To be respected and have integrity and make a enough of a living to do it again and again and again, and that’s where I am now. That where I’ve always been. I’ve finally been given the tools now to re-establish that idea again.
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in blb he can realize his ideas just he wants them to sound! 
