It really shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that Slipknot and Limp Bizkit had a go at each other at the turn of the millennium. The bands’ frontmen, Corey Taylor and Fred Durst, were the two biggest loudmouths of the nu metal era.
While The Nine sustained a feud with fellow masked metallers Mushroomhead, Durst was pissing everyone off with his he-said-she-said bullshit, running his mouth about Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. The controversy magnets had to collide at some point or another.
The clash finally came in February 2000. The context: in 1999, Durst allegedly said, “Slipknot fans are a bunch of fat, ugly kids.” The statement reverberated through the aether and caught Taylor’s ear. What was quiet gossip then became the rest of the metal scene’s business.
Taylor, along with ’Knot drummer Joey Jordison and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan, was appearing live on Australian TV, promoting the tour they were then tearing through Down Under. The trio began taking questions from the crowd of fans in attendance. One of them asked: “Hey, fellas, what’s going on with Limp Bizkit?! Is there a bit of a rivalry going on or what?”
Taylor spoke up, because of course he did. “You would have to ask the Limp Bizkit question…” he replies, implying it’s something he wants to shy away from. Spoilers: he doesn’t. Masked and jumpsuited, he brings the audience up to speed. “You know what I had to say to that?” he asks rhetorically, before an excellently timed jeer of “Fred Durst is fat!”
Taylor continues: “I’m a fat, ugly kid, and Slipknot fans, for the most part, enjoy all kinds of music, like Limp Bizkit, maybe.” So far, so diplomatic. “So what you’re basically saying is that your fans are fat, ugly kids too? You wanna talk shit on the people you care about?! WE WILL COME THERE AND WE WILL KILL YOU!” That’s more like it.
The intervening years have smoothed things over a bit. At a 2011 live show, Taylor stated, “All I can say is that Fred Durst is a person,” although he claims he did take a photo with Durst’s kids, who were apparently huge Maggots. By 2016, photos of the pair taking selfies together were getting uploaded to Facebook, so consider the bridge rebuilt.
The wounds may have healed, but this remains a bizarre mini-feud in the careers of two of metal’s most incendiary names.
