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During their brief but noteworthy time in the rock and roll spotlight, people have labelled the sounds created by Static-X with a variety of colorful-if not always accurate-descriptions. In two years that have now passed since their debut album, Wisconsin Death Trip, first introduced this Chicago-based unit to the metal scene, the music of the X-men has been called "techno-metal," "extreme rock," "heavy trance-core" and the band's personal fave, "evil disco." But none of those tags truly seem to do full justice to the work of guitarist/vocalist Wayne Static, bassist Tony Campos, drummer Ken Jay and new guitarist Tripp Eisen. As shown throughout their latest work, the awe-inspiring Machine, this recently realigned quartet seem to take particular pride in their ability to deftly defy convention and adroitly avert classification. "I think we're all guilty to trying to place things in categories that we can deal with," Static said. "It makes it easier for us to understand it. But that's really hard to do with music. When you call something 'hard rock' or 'heavy metal' what does that really mean? Is Black sabbath really the same as Kiss? You just can't place everything in a catch-all category, and I know that's true for us as well. We started to define what we are as a band on the first album, and I think we've taken a big step along that path with Machine." "I know it sounds a little stale, but the fact is that we do everything for out fans," Static said. "When we were writing this album and recording it, one of the primary questions we kept asking one another is, 'How do you think the fans will react to that?' I know a lot of bands seem to say that they make music for themselves. Well, we're not like that, and we're proud of it." Of course, as anyone even remotely familiar withy the happenings of the Static-X world well knows, not everything has gone perfectly for this unit in recent months. Indeed, just before they began recording Machine late last year original guitarist Kiochi Fukuda decided to split from the group, leaving a gaping (if temporary) hole in the band's musical front. To many fans, it had been Kiochi's unpredictable style and exotic stage presence that had been a foundational element of Static-X' metallic attack, and without him some of those fans feared the band's high-flying musical ship would possibly run aground. "Tripp was far from a stranger to us," Static said. "We had toured with Dope last year, and we had hung out together quite a bit. when Kiochi made his decision, tripp was the first guy who cae to mind. At that time we didn't even realize that he had left dope. it was like the rock and roll gods were smiling down all of us. We didn't have to go through that audition stage. In fact, we didn't hold a single audition. Tripp came in right when we had begun work on the album, learned what we were up to, and fit right in." While Eisen spent his perion of indoctrination in and around the Static-X camp, Wayne reveals that the axe slinger didn't actually appear on any of the tracks on Machine. But now that the band is back on the road, the guitarist's presence is really beginning to be fully revealed. Eisen's presence not only adds additional depth and scope to the group's new material, he's also been able to make subtle but significant changes to the unit's earlier material, making it heavier and more impactful than ever. Though Wayne can understand the fact that some fans may initially be disappointed by the group's roster change, he believes that after they check out the band's current lineup on-stage, any of their initial apprehensions will quickly-and permanently-disappear. � Hit Parader Magazine. The article was written by Phil Bouchet. I take no credit for this article and it has been edited. |