Static X

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....................... ...........Jan / 2002

Official Music Publication on The Web Representing The Bay Area

Best Seen with "Explorer"

Wayne Static of .Static X !

.Wayne Static produces an almost mechanical, nonstop rhythmic that booms out of the speakers, while guitars roar and buzz, the singer impales his lyrics with a series of savage snarls, and dialogue . It's the latest in the illustrious line of industrial hell-rock. Static X. the Southern California quartet may be powerful and well-crafted offering with its new CD Machine. Better than Wisconsin Death Trip? Hard to say really since they are so much alike. On one hand Machine replaces the programmed feeling with a stronger natural sound but still misses some of the punch from tracks like Push It and Sweat of the Bud or my fave Bled for Days. Yet there's a brand new slate of high-octane tracks here to fill the void that in time may turn out to be as equally good if not better. Between the subtle electronica nuances and drop-tuned grind, there's something undeniably tribal about the Static X brand of metal not unlike that of Sepultura or White Zombie, yet somehow Wayne Static finds a way to take his rampant growling chants and redundant riffing to the next level. Permanence might be the best example on the disc but looking across the board, there's a case to be made for almost every song on here. Check them out they Rock and Roll !

Q: Hey caught your show in San Francisco.
A: Oh, that was the first show of the tour - like two days ago?
Q: Are you in Las Vegas now?
A: Yes we are.
Q: Have you had a chance to gamble?
A: I'm not a gambling man. I'd rather take my money and buy something with it.
Q: I don't do much myself. So you have a new guitar player and a new CD out.
A: Semi-new, yeah. It doesn't feel so new to me anymore.
Q: So how's your new guitar player Tripp Eison working out so far? A: Great! He brings a whole new level of showmanship to our live performance. He is a great player. He's really interesting to watch on stage, and he kind of makes the whole band work that much harder.
Q: So I've caught you guys a couple of times before at the OzzFest with Pitchshifter and the Slaves on Dope. How different is this tour? A: It's a bigger show this time. Every tour we do, we kind of build up our stage set and you know, we just have more happening now, more lights, more crap on the stage and it just has a bigger vibe to it. And now, since we have two albums, we can pick and choose what songs we want to play a little more.
Q: When you were writing for this CD "Machine", were you writing while you were doing the OzzFest?
A: Yeah. Well I took a whole year and wrote it while we were on tour and I started around OzzFest '99 and finished up writing around OzzFest 2000, so it was all written on the road.
Q: Some bands say they don't have time to write songs on tour
A: There's plenty of time on the road. That's all you got is time. I can't write when I'm at home. Too many distractions.
Q: Are you from Wisconsin?
A: No, no. I live in Los Angeles. I'm not from Wisconsin. None of us are. That's a common myth that we're from Wisconsin. It happened to be the name of our first record, but I'm from Michigan, Ken's from Illinois. We're from all over.
Q: Did you finish another video?
A: We just shot a video for Cold and I haven't even seen the first edit of it yet. We finished up just a week ago shooting it. It's on the Queen of the Damn song track. Cold is like the lead single for that song track, so the video also has kind of a vampire scene to it.
Q: Making Music Video's look like a lot of fun
A: Yeah. This video in particular is more creative than any other ones. There's a whole shoreline where I'm like the last human on earth and I'm fighting vampires and all my friends and my band mates by the end are turned into vampires and I'm held up in this house and welding big huge pieces of metal onto the door. It's really cool.
Q: Well that's some of the perks of this job.
A: Yeah, you get to weld at like 4:00 in the morning.
Q: With you other CD "Wisconsin Death Trip," now you based that on a book you were reading?
A: Well, the title of the CD we took from a book, but it's not like a concept over anything. Nothing really based on the book as far as lyrically. We just thought it was kind of like a cool title, so we just kind of copped it. And there is a song called Wisconsin Death Trip on there, so.
Q: How did the Family Values tour go? I saw you on that one with Stone Temple Pilots
A: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I had a great time on that. It was really nice for us to play for some new people. I know a lot of the people that showed up for those had never seen us before because it's a different crowd for the most part. So I think it was really good for us in that respect.
Q: I guess everybody always asks things about your hair, but what I read, was that you wear it shorter now so it's less time for you to fix it up in the air. Is that true?
A: It's true actually.
Q: Wow you have touring for quite some time now?
A: We've had a decent amount of time off. The first couple of year we really hit it hard. We didn't take any time off at all. When we got home and started working on Machine, we took six months off to do machine. And since then, we started touring and then we unexpectedly took a month off in September after the bombing shit because we were supposed to go to Europe the next day and we canceled that tour and we had a month off there. Then we did Family Values and then we just took two months off for Christmas and stuff. We've had plenty of breaks, but in way it's good for us mentally to take time off and just be grounded and be normal - a normal person for a couple of months before you hit the road again. Q: Your CD Machine is pretty consistent with your music this time? A: I'm Glad you picked up on that. We just felt like doing it a little heavier this time around.
Q: So what's next after this tour?
A: After this tour it's with Korn, I'm looking forward to that.
Q: Your live show is where it's at, I really enjoy watching you guys play. You have a whole thing going with your fan participation is just really great.
A: Cool. Thanks man. We pride ourselves on putting on awesome shows. That's what we're all about. Some bands, they try to ... the goal for some bands is to sound as good live as they do on the record; and for us, our goal is to try to make our record sound halfway as good as our live show.
Q: I know you've been ask this a hundred times where did your name Static X come from?
A: We were trying to just find a band name that sounded cool. It's hard, you know. It took us like two years to just come up with the word static. We thought it had some kind of energy to it and sort of fit with what we were doing musically. We were just called Static for the first two years. We ended up adding the X to distinguish ourselves from other static bands, there's so many static's out there we started doing a search across the nation. So many things came up so we thought the X would be cool. A guy in our office was like a big Racer-X fan.

Well, I'll let you go now. I've seen you guys allot of times and its been great seeing you hit the big times now, take care.
A: Thanks . I'll see you around.

By Randy Cohen

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.Members of Static X:

Wayne Static : Vocals, Guitars
Tripp Eison : Guitars
Tony Campos: Bass. Vocals
Ken Jay-Drums