Out of adversity often comes great art. By all accounts, Chicago's Static-X went slightly mad during the gruelling touring slog promoting debut album 'Wisconsin Death Trip'. Guitarist Koichi Fukuda bailed out prior to the recording of 'Machine' but the band, determined to lay down the sounds in their head, went ahead and recorded it as a three-piece.
Reversing the usual metal trend and putting the joke track 'Bien Viendos' first, its twenty-two seconds consists of some accordion music and some whooping and hollering, makes the sledgehammer opening of 'Get To The Gone' all the more abrasive. That guy with the big hair, vocalist Wayne Static, screams several exorcisms while the pounding guitars and percussion rage around him.
'Permanence' and, particularly, 'Black And White', reveal the band owe a debt to British industrial pioneers Killing Joke, with Static sounding uncannily like Jaz Coleman in the chorus of the latter - his throat almost snapping under the intensity - while Tony Campos' pounding bass rams the point home.
The eerie keyboards of 'Cold' preface Static's hushed, (aptly) chilling vocals while the grinding 'Structural Defect' introduces some industrial fuzz into the mix, pushing up the power another notch.
It's easy to see the band's debt to the likes of Ministry and Pantera but 'Machine' sees Static-X come of age and mould an album defiantly in their own image. What was it someone once said about cornering a tiger?
