Dino Cazares is currently making the rounds promoting Fear Factory’s new album, Aggression Continuum, and during an interview with the Talk Toomey podcast, he made an interesting revelation: he was asked to try out for Limp Bizkit.
The revelation comes while Cazares is recounting the L.A. metal scene in the early/mid-90s, which included not only Fear Factory, but also bands like Korn, System of a Down, Static-X, and Spineshank. Since all of those bands are lumped into the nu-metal genre, the discussion then turns to Limp Bizkit first coming on Cazares’ radar (as transcribed by MetalSucks):
“We were on tour with Iron Maiden around ’95, when they had Blaze Bayley. We were playing everywhere, and we met the guys in Limp Bizkit. They came on our bus and they played the demo, their first demo. They said that Ross Robinson was gonna be producing the album and this and that, and they were gonna be in L.A., and ‘Come hang out.’ And so Ross Robinson called us up and Bizkit were there and I was able to be on their first record, on a song ‘Indigo Flow.’”
That track, incidentally, also features Cazares’ former Fear Factory bandmate, Christian Olde Wolbers.
ANYWAY, Cazares continues:
“Later on they had asked me to audition for Limp Bizkit when they loss Wes [Borland]. I respectfully declined.”
I don’t know why the hell anyone in Limp Bizkit thought they needed to audition Cazares given that they were clearly familiar with his talents (would “Nookie” really present any challenge for Dino to learn?). But good for Cazares for passing. I’m sure if he’d gotten the job he would have made some good money, but he would also be “former Limp Bizkit guitarist Dino Cazares,” and that’s a burden no musician wants to bear.
You can listen to the entire interview below. We also had Dino on The MetalSucks Podcast recently — listen here.