Sam Rivers, the bass player and founding member of the metal band Limp Bizkit, which was one of nu-metal’s best-selling acts in the late 1990s and is credited with bringing a unique mix of heavy metal, hip-hop and punk into the mainstream, has died at 48.
The band confirmed Mr. Rivers’s death in a statement on social media on Saturday. The statement did not provide a cause, nor did it say where and when he died.
The band described Mr. Rivers as “the pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”
Mr. Rivers was born on Sept. 2, 1977. He began playing music as a teenager in Jacksonville, Fla., before he was scouted at age 18 by Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit’s lead vocalist.
Mr. Durst, who at the time was 25, had a vision for a band with a specific style and sound, he said in a video he posted on Instagram on Sunday.
He came upon Mr. Rivers at a bar in Jacksonville and was so taken by his performance that “everything disappeared besides his gift,” Mr. Durst said.
After the show, he pitched Mr. Rivers on his band. Mr. Rivers responded quickly, he recalled, saying: “Killer, I’m in. Let’s do it.”
The two started “jamming, messing around,” before starting to look for more potential members, Mr. Durst said.
Mr. Rivers suggested they recruit the jazz drummer John Otto. Wes Borland, a guitarist, joined the group to form Limp Bizkit in 1994. DJ Lethal, who acted as both a producer and a disc jockey, joined two years later.
The band’s 1999 album, “Significant Other,” was nominated for a Grammy for best rock album.
Mr. Rivers “had this ability to pull this beautiful sadness out of the bass that I’ve never heard,” Mr. Durst said on Instagram, adding that he had “gone through gallons and gallons of tears since yesterday.”
Information about Mr. Rivers’s survivors was not immediately available.
In an interview for “Raising Hell,” Jon Wiederhorn’s 2020 book about the lives of metal legends, Mr. Rivers said he struggled with his health because of excessive drinking.
He took a break from the band in 2015 and returned in 2018, ahead of the release of its sixth album, “Still Sucks,” in October 2021.
This summer, Limp Bizkit was on the lineup of the Reading Festival in England, where the British publication NME said the band proved they “can still recapture the intensity they had during the turn of the millennium.”
The group was set to begin a South American tour on Nov. 29.
“It’s so tragic that he’s not here right now,” Mr. Durst said on Instagram, at times holding back tears.
The group, he said, “rocked stadiums together, we’ve been around the world together, shared so many moments together.”
He added: “I know that wherever Sam is right now, he’s smiling and feeling like, ‘Man, I did it, I did it.’ And man, did he do it.”
Talya Minsberg is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news.
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