Style
Borland's guitar playing is experimental and nontraditional, and he is noted for his creative use of six and seven-string guitars. Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ features him playing without a guitar pick, performing with two hands, one playing melodic notes, and the other playing chord progressions. The song "Stuck" uses a sustain pedal in the first bar, and muted riffs in the second bar. His guitar playing has made use of octave shapes, and choppy, eighth-note rhythms, sometimes accompanied by muting his strings with his left hand, creating a percussive sound. Borland has also made use of unevenly accented syncopated sixteenth notes to create a disorienting effect, and hypnotic, droning licks.
Borland's playing is still identifiable in Black Light Burns, but by his own admission, he strives to go for a cleaner type of sound in Black Light Burns, where the heaviness comes from his bass playing, instead of in Limp Bizkit where he seeks a more metal oriented sound. He plays keyboards and textures more overtly as tools to layer Black Light Burns' sound where in Limp Bizkit the layers are considered by the full band more.
Borland writes songs by forming them in rough outlines and filling in the details later. According to Borland, "I'm good at creating ideas while using a guitar in a new way, but it takes me a long time. I can't just come up with stuff fast and rip it up. I think about constructing songs, and even riffs, in the same way as a painting, putting on a little bit at a time. They're sketchy at first, and then I know what I want, and I fit notes into places."
Borland is also known for performing in costumes and body paint during concerts, appearing in bunny and kung fu suits, and painted as a skeleton and what he describes as a "burnt match". Describing the character, he stated, "I go onstage wearing almost nothing. I have underwear and my boots on, and I paint my whole head black—from the neck up—and I have the black contacts. All you can see is these glowing teeth." Borland's black contacts were customized for him by a company noted for making contacts for the science fiction TV series Babylon 5.
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