What Not To Listen To: Static X
This post was written for SmartassRadio 1.0 – and it has remained hidden somewhere in my hard drive between “Slutty Squirters 3″ and “Terminator 3″ (both equally erotic for eerily similar reasons). Today is the day I got the new album, Cult of Static. While I ponder my review, you can read this little ditty, which was written in October of ’07. It’s not my best writing, but it did lay the groundwork for this masterpiece. – DJ
This week I’m gonna have to go ahead and tell you to not listen to the entire Static X catalogue. I went to see the Operation Annihilation Tour on October 16th and they were far and away the lowest point of the show. And they were headlining. Even fat Dino from Fear Factory’s new band Devine Heresy kicked the living crap out of Wayne Static and their lead singer had a broken leg. Now, I’m not one to base much on a name or look (I love Skeletonwitch and Gwar (update: let’s put Dance Club Massacre annnnd Avenged Sevenfold in here -ed.)) but Static X definitely has the worst of both worlds. Frank has the right idea in that no band should have the letter X as a full word in their name. I love Symphony X but if they had a different name I’d love em even more.
How dare you have the audacity to show up with that awful nu-metal meets Kid n’ Play haircut? It was outdated in 2002 when you did that video with the X-ecutioners and Linkin Park and it certainly hasn’t made any progress towards coming back. The 261 word long Wikipedia article on Wayne Richard Wells (which apparently isn’t sure if he was born in 1965 or 1975… though I’d say it’s safe to assume ’75) contains the following 52-word long paragraph:
His gravity defying hair is his most notable feature, which used to be held up, as mentioned in the Wisconsin Death Trip liner notes, by White Rain hair spray. Today, Wayne uses Suave Rave 4X Mega hair spray to keep his hair up. It takes him 20 minutes to do his hair.
That embarrasses me.
I’m also still reeling over how many people showed up to watch a band of what looks to be extras from the cast of “The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift”. Seriously Wayne, did you drive a tricked out 1998 Toyota Supra to the show? ‘Cause it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. I can see it now… the bass player Tony is the tough guy mechanic who drives a huge pickup truck which shoots flames out the tail pipe, Koichi Fukuda (I swear to all things holy I didn’t make that up) is blatantly the AZN chick who “gets a thrill from riding with the guys” and has a spunky attitude and schoolgirl wardrobe to match. Drummer Nick Oshiro is the bedreadlocked pseudo-rocker who drives a Camaro in a field full of Hondas and Toyotas… yea, he’s a rebel.
“But what about the music?” you may be asking yourself. Well, I was in the unfortunate predicament last spring of having an awful rotation at the station containing a myriad of bad CDs (see also: I Killed the Prom Queen and Cradle of Filth’s Thornography) but none were as bad as Cannibal by Static X. The tracks read as follows:
1.”Cannibal”
2.”No Submission”
3.”Behemoth”
4.”Chemical Logic”
5.”Destroyer”
6.”Forty Ways”
7.”Chroma-Matic”
8.”Cuts You Up”
9.”Reptile”
10.”Electric Pulse”
11.”Goat”
12.”Team Hate”
Sounds like the track listing to pretty much anything you have seen in metal since the mid nineties, right? Well, it might have been if all the lyrics weren’t indecipherable garbage sung over 2 chords and drumming somewhere in between the pseudo techno of a Rob Zombie movie (not even his own albums) and a blast beat worthy of the grindcore band which practices down the street and is made up of 30 year old Napalm Death diehards… yeah we know guys, the “Halloween” EP is the heaviest shit ever recorded…
Let’s take a look at the lyrics to the title track. The first verse is as follows:
“Thrash it, bash it, live to smash it. Light the spark reach out and crash.”
Are you serious, Mr. Wells? That’s what you decided was appropriate for a release on Warner Bros. Records? I think I’ve written better lyrics while throwing up on myself in my sleep after a night of drinking which seems to be happening with more and more regularity. Unfortunately, what happens even more often is vomit induced by accidentally hearing a Static X song and knowing someone somewhere in the world is listening to a different Static X song and actually enjoying it.
Now, I’ll admit that there was a brief moment in time where I really dug Wisconsin Death Trip (see: the 7th grade). And based on the fact that everything the band has released following that CD has been a carbon copy of it, who’s to say I wouldn’t like Cannibal if I was 13 years old again? Of course, that is neither here nor there and I’d like to conclude with one final thought:
BLECH.
