If the Deftones are tone deaf, does that mean Static-X are ecstatic? What do you think?
"I'm not really interested in writing happy songs," front man Wayne Static says. "That doesn't have its place in Static-X. The reason I listened to music when I was a kid is because I was pissed off about something. And I'd throw on Ozzy or something and it would help me get through it, knowing that there was somebody else that pissed off."
Static has no problem finding subject matter.
"There's a lot to be angry about in the world," he says. "There's always problems in personal relationships that piss you off from day to day."
So Static-X plays techno-metal songs with names like "Destroy All" and "New Pain" and "Burn to Burn." In the video for the catchy "The Only," off its 2003 album Shadow Zone, the band looks like it's performing in some serial killer's dark basement, and Static growls like both Mike Patton swinging a Tomahawk and Jonathan Davis eating candy Korn.
If it sounds a bit Disturbed, that's the intention. The song is so goddamn hooky and so simultaneously defiant and aloof that you get the feeling Static-X has the chops to write theme music for more cool, dark superheroes than Seth Cohen on The O.C. could even name. (Aren't all cool, dark superheroes supposed to be simultaneously defiant and aloof?)
Sensitive, smart-ass indie boy Seth would never listen to this band, though, or if he did, it would be in an ironic, "minty" way. This is not to say Wayne Static doesn't have a soft side. But when there's any danger of it being exposed, he covers it with something like body armor.
Consider the song "So," which is as close to a ballad as Static gets, even with its crunchy-ass guitars, furious Linkin Park-like chorus, and industrial elements that sound like Nine Inch Nails on a chalkboard. Static wrote that song at home on an acoustic guitar.
"I said, 'Oh, this is a great song—for Staind'," Static says and laughs. "'How are we going to make this into a Static-X song?' We added some big guitars, some electronic elements, some keyboards and turned it into what it is now."
It is indeed now a Static-X song. It sounds a little triumphant, but don't you dare call it jubilant.