Tag Archives: Industrial

Influenced, Music

2001 – Part 5.6: Static X – Machine

A singer from a band I was in burnt me a copy.

“Machine” is the second studio album by Static-X, released on May 22, 2001.

The Personnel for the album is Wayne Static (RIP) on Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards and Programming. Tony Campos is on bass, Ken Jay is on drums, Tripp Eisen is on guitar, with ex-lead guitarist Koichi Fukuda credited as a keyboard player and Ulrich Wild contributing keyboards to different songs.

The writing for the songs happened while on tour for the “Wisconsin Death Trip” with Wayne Static writing all the songs by himself on the tour bus while the other band members lived it up and partied hard. When the band went in to record the album, Wayne Static told the guys that the royalties for the song writing would not be split four ways this time around.

How do you think that went down with the other members?

It lead to lead guitarist Koichi Fukuda’s departure before recording began, and drummer Ken Jay’s eventual departure a few years later.

While Static played all the guitars on the album, Tripp Eisen (Fukuda’s replacement) was involved with the album’s photoshoot and promotional materials, the music videos, the world tour for support of the album, and he helped arrange the Static-X comic book deal.

The album was certified Gold by the RIAA on November 10, 2003. It was a pretty big deal to achieve this certification, in a market dominated with peer to peer downloading.

As was the norm with bands during this Nu-Metal period, the album was free of guitar solos.

Bien Venidos

A short 30 second intro of people having a party.

Get To The Gone

The vocals are deep, almost Rob Zombie like.

Musically, its heavy rock with a lot of Dimebag Pantera style influences and Rammstein/Ministry/NIN industrial metal overtones.

Permanence

The electronics are prominent here, with the Digitech Whammy providing new sounds for the riffs.

This one is more NIN than anything.

Black And White

I like the intro riff on this. Its dissonant and it reminds me of Megadeth for some reason.

This Is Not

Yeah, this is not a song that has made its way to my playlists of liked songs. But they seemed to like it.

Otsego Undead

It’s got this Black Betty drum beat with a lot of electronica and some other weird stuff. The riff kicks in and it’s the same as the other riffs before that.

Cold

What a song.

The best track, hidden deep into the album at track 7.

The riff and the keys melody over it work brilliant. The whispering vocal reminds me of Type O Negative.

And if the song sounds familiar it’s because it appeared in the film “Queen of the Damned”. It was also featured on the film’s soundtrack album, performed by Wayne Static for the soundtrack who replaced Jonathan Davis who sings it in the movie.

Structural Defect

An open string riff that reminds me of Metallica who weren’t playing riffs like these anymore at this time.

…In A Bag

More of the same, fast open string riffs, some electronica and Rob Zombie style vocals.

Burn To Burn

It’s got a cool chromatic riff.

Machine

The title track. I was expecting big things and it was a let down

A Dios Alma Perdida

The riffs are demented, heavy, very Sabbath tritone like. It almost experimental, horror soundtrack like. I had to Google what it meant.

Alma Perdida means lost soul. Adios means bye.

Bye Lost Soul.

By the end of it, my view point of this album is one heavily marketed good song that sold the album. When the singer in my band asked me about it, I said that I went “Cold” on it. I know, it’s a bad joke.

Press play on it for the song “Cold”. If you like that, listen to “Get To The Gone” and “A Dios Alma Perdida”.

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Music

Bon Jovi – What About It’s Over

Just finished listening to Bon Jovi’s new album What About Now (deluxe edition).

Lucky I purchased the deluxe addition as the best song on the album is Every Road Leads Home to You, the Sambora penned track from his equally forgettable solo album, Aftermath of The Lowdown.

The next song worth any note is That’s What the Water Made Me. So this is what happens, when 50 year old rockers try to chase the money from the twenty something’s.  Instead of writing for their hard core audience, they are focusing on a different market.

Bon Jovi doesn’t even know who their audience is anymore.  They have lost complete touch with them.  In a world where one to one connections is the new normal (take a leaf out of Nikki Sixx’s twittering and Facebook offerings), Bon Jovi is entrenched in the old paradigm.  Spend months creating an album for an audience they don’t even know. I am not a hater.

I am a big Bon Jovi fan.  I am displeased with this effort.  Hell, the best song they have written in the last 5 years is This is Love, This Is Life from the Greatest Hits CD.  You would only hear this song if you purchased the deluxe edition that had disc 2 and another two bonus songs on that.  The carbon copied Someday I’ll Be A Saturday Night morphed into The More Things Change is also a stand out.

Yeah I know Jovi sell shows out on a regular basis, but you tell me a fan that goes to the show to hear the new songs and I will call them a liar.  A set list of their most recent show (via setlist.fm) on March 10 shows only 3 songs played from the new album (Because We Can, Amen and That’s What The Water Made Me).  That is two too many.

The only tune that they should be pushing is That’s The Water Made Me.

Cause devils in heaven
There’s angels in hell

You don’t know these days, who is righteous or not.  We live in a world of fakes, a world of avatars.  Where people who think they have 1000 Facebook friends are cool, where people pay $800 for a meet and greet just to say they did.  The lines between good and evil are blurred these days.  

Love is like fingerprints It don’t wash away

No one forgets their first love or their greatest love.  It stays forever with them.  Look at the band Hinder.  They have made a career singing about the one that got away. 

That’s what the water made me That’s who I am and what I’ll be

This is it.  We can’t change how we are made, how we have grown up and what we believe in.  Of course we can adapt to situations and sometimes we can fake a different personality but in the end, we will fall back to how we were made and what we are.  Look at how the 80’s glam bands thought they had to go all Industrial or grunge like to keep an audience, further alienating their fan base, until the said Fuck that and returned to their roots. 

This world, it’s cracked and crazy
Say one of your pretty prayers for me
No roles in the garden? Or Wishing well?

Life is no Garden of Eden.  It never was and it never will be.  We have copyright granted monopolies fighting hard to control the internet.  We have people working 12 hour days just to see all of their moneys go to the mortgage, to the utilities, to basic survival needs.   At night, we might feel better saying a pretty prayer, but that is all it is.  The World is cracked and Crazy. 

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