“It would have been career suicide”: Dino Cazares on why he didn’t audition for Limp Bizkit in 2001

Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares has reflected on the time he turned down the offer to audition for Limp Bizkit.

The opportunity came knocking in 2001, when Cazares was offered the chance to show the nu metallers his skills and potentially replace Wes Borland after he quit the band over reported creative differences.

In a new interview with Metal Hammer, Cazares explained why he wasn’t interested in joining Limp Bizkit: “Because it was in 2001 and I felt that that style of nu metal had already hit its peak.”

He continued: “Limp Bizkit’s [sound] was already oversaturated and on its way down. I said, ‘If I actually got that gig, it would have been career suicide.’ Fear Factory, we were pretty much at our peak. And it’s funny because, two years later, I was out of Fear Factory.”

That decision may have been for the best if the respective bands’ chart positions were anything to go by. Limp Bizkit’s first album without Borland, Results May Vary, was critically panned and would become their lowest charting since their 1997 debut Three Dollar Bills, Y’all$. Meanwhile, Fear Factory had their biggest commercial hit with their 2004 album Archetype, their first album without Cazares before he returned in 2009.

Cazares also told the publication about the band’s experience of making Fear Factory’s second album, Demanufacture in the same building that Bon Jovi were using to track their 1995 album These Days.

“Bon Jovi had the other room and Faith No More [who were recording King For A Day… Fool For A Lifetime] had the barn outside,” the guitarist recalled. “One time, our keyboard player, Rhys Fulber, is on a payphone, and a guy walks past who he thinks is a runner. He says, ‘Hey, can you go to the deli and pick me up a ham and turkey? Hold the mustard, extra mayo.’ Someone walks over to Rhys and goes, ‘That’s Jon Bon Jovi! What the fuck are you doing?!’ Ha ha!”