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The back-lit spotlight caught Wayne Static at just the right angle. As the on-stage chaos welled up around him, the glaring beam of pure white light shot from behind him, silhouetting Static's thin frame and making his foot-high strands of hair appear even more outlandish than usual. As the standing-room-only crowd roared its approval, Static-X's guitarist/vocalist continued to tear into his tortured axe, making it roar in conjunction with the high-energy songs that in recent days have propelled Wayne and his bandmates, guitarist Koichi Fukuda, bassist Tony Campos and drummer Ken Jay to the very pinnacle of hard rock acclaim. It was abundantly clear to everyone in attendance that this Los Angeles-based "evil disco" band had arrived in the big time. Their various shows across the face of the North American continent had begun to reach a fever pitch---as had the response to their now-million-selling debut disc, Wisconsin Death Trip. "I'm the first one to admit how amazed I am by all of this," Wayne said as he cooled off after the band's scorching set. "We've worked our butts off to get here, but it's really been worth it. All the touring, all the travelling, all the interviews, as well as everything else adds up to being a lot of work. But when you're in a band like ours, and you really want to do something that people will remember, you realize it's all just part of the job."  Just doing their job has certainly paid off big-time for the members of Static-X. Their videos, especially for their breakthrough single, Push It, have often basked in heavy-rotation glory on MTV. Their tours, which have included stints with the likes of Powerman 5000, Slayer and System of a Down-as well as a key role in this summer's Ozzfest 2000- have brought them to the attention of tens of thousands of new fans. And the unexpected success of their aforementioned debut album has gone a long way towards establishing this decidedly different quartet as one of the true metal sensations of the new millinnium. Indeed, it's been an exciting, amazing, unpredictable time for this LA.-via-Chicago unit. In fact, if you didn't know better you just might start thinking that this group's "rythmic trancecore" sound-a mighty mix of metal heaviness, industrial moodiness and techno energy-could very well be hard rock's Next Big Thing. "We're four guys who grew up on rock and roll," said the wild-haired Static. "It was what we ate for breakfast, it's what we dreamed about at night, and it's what we played during every waking hour. Rock and roll has really consumed our lives for as long as we can remember, so on this album we've tried to regurgitate as much of it back as we possibly could." According to legend (or at least the band's record label bio), both Static and Jay originally called the Midwest home. Back in the early '90s, both rockers made their first steps into the music industry with the Chicago-based band Deep Blue Dream, a group that happened to share its rehearsal space with the Smashing Pumpkins before Corgan's crew hit the big time. Despite some positive feedback and a few promising moments, Deep Blue Dream soon came to a crashing end when its members realized that they'd rather spend time at the sunny shores of the Left Coast than battling through Chicago's notoriously cold winters... and battling against the town's notoriously slow rock scene. A few weeks later, Static and Jay had relocated to the fun-in-the-sun capitol of El Lay and as they began to make the rounds through that city's ever active club circuit, they happened upon both Campos, who had been playing a variety of area death metal bands, and Fukuda. There was an instant bonding between the four young musicians, and the fledging unit soon began the arduos tasks of writing songs and hitting the ever-unpredictable So Cal club circuit. After having their decidedly heavy material initially recieve some less-than-enthusiastic reviews in the local press and some thumbs-down responses from the au-courant patrons of the Sunset Strip, Stati-X slowly began to win over the city's notoriously jaded club mongers. By mid-1998 they had ben approached by a major label that believed in the band's heavy-handed style, and was anxious to make his quartet a figurehead for hard rock's latest revival. "It's taken us a while to get what we're doing to where we want it to be," Static said. "It wasn't easy coming up with this organic-electronic mix we now call 'evil disco.' We've gotten a lot of help along the way, bands that have seen us, or heard one of our tapes, and asked us to play a show or two with them. Coal Chamber certainly helped in that regard. They saw us at a really small show, and they asked us to open for them at the Roxy in L.A. That really helped people take us seriously and made them stop and give our music a listen." Less than three months after inking their label deal, the Static-X crew had recorded such tracks as Push It, I'm With Stupid and Stem, all destined to serve as the backbone of Wisconsin Death Trip, an album whose title is drawn from the strange turn-of-the-century photo book that Static found at a flea market. But even before that album hit the streets, Stati-X was making news when one of their songs, Bled For Days, was included in the Bride of Chucky soundtrack. That initial success was compounded when their debut disc emerged as a ful-blown heavy metal extravaganza, complete with churning guitars, burning vocals and a look that was as strange as strange could get. It's been one wild, wacky ride for Static-X, but ol' Wayne insists that the group's musical journey is only now just beginning to take shape. In fact, the fright-haired frontman believes that we've all experienced just the first blush of the power and glory of the group's very special hard rock attack. Standing in front of 16,000 people during this summer's Ozzfest, I suddenly stopped and reflected back upon how I got to this point," he said. "It's been really hard work-more work than I had ever imagined it would take. We've had a total of maybe three weeks off since Wisconsin Death Trip came out back in March of last year. But I'm not complaining. I've spent my whole life working towards this. This is all I've ever wanted to do-since I was seven years old, playing at my grade school talent show." � Hit Parader Magazine. The article was written by Joseph Hall. I take no credit for this article. |