NOW WES BORLAND LIKES NORMA JEAN, TOO
Wes Borland’s campaign to establish some street cred continues!
After declaring his admiration for perennial MetalSucks favorites The Human Abstract back in April, and subsequently contributing some pretty rad artwork for the new Landmine Marathon 7″, Jakarta’s favorite guitarist is now apparently rallying to have Norma Jean open for Limp Bizkit and Black Light Burns on an upcoming tour. From his official Twitter account:
“It’ll be LB, some band, some band, BLB. So I can have a breather. Always wanted to play 2 sets in one night! So excited!! We’re working on dates and the rest of the package now. USA. (I’m hoping we get Norma Jean, we’re going after them for it…. Love them)”
So, uh, neat? I fucking LOVED Norma Jean’s first two albums, Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child and O’ God, The Aftermath, but haven’t really been that excited about their subsequent releases; and I always suspected that part of their creative downward slide had to do with them making back-to-back records with producer/advocate of stealing music Ross Robinson, who, oh hey wouldn’t you know it, also helped launch Limp Bizkit’s career, producing their debut, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. (In all fairness, Robinson has also worked on at least a couple of albums I actually dig. But his track record — which includes records by Korn, Cold, and Soulfly, plus one of Machine Head’s painfully bad forays into nu-metal, The Burning Red — is pretty spotty on the whole.) And, yes, I imagine this tour would potentially expose the band to a much wider audience.
But I’m also not sure that audience would appreciate Norma Jean — at least not the band’s earlier, more experimental work. I know these are people who love to pretend that they “get” “weird” stuff because Bizkit are allegedly genre-benders and Borland performs dressed like a tiki doll designed by a particularly angry sixth grader, but let’s be real — these folks are mostly of the frat boy variety. “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste” ain’t exactly “Counterfeit,” y’know? So this trek might be a waste of Norma Jean’s time. It also might hurt their image with their more hardcore fans, but who knows.
In any case, this is just Borland thinking out loud, at least for the time being. So while I guess there’s no point getting our collective panties in a twist over a Limp Bizkit/Norma Jean tour until it’s officially announced, feel free to start whining about/advocating for such a trek in our comments section below.
-AR
[via Metal Injection]
