martindavey87 With nu metal being at its peak in 2001, it’s no surprise that Static-X’s album that year, ‘Machine’, gave them a huge mainstream push and garnered them a bigger fan base than before. Looking to capitalize on that success (and apparently with record label pressure to boot), it’s even less of a surprise that their third album, 2003’s ‘Shadow Zone’ picks up where its predecessor left off.

While there is a slightly more melodic emphasis to this album than previous releases, ‘Shadow Zone’ is still an unrelenting assault of industrial grooves and pounding, jackhammer guitar riffs, sounding massively overproduced to help make the music as big and beefy as possible. The songs are well written, and Wayne Static’s unique blend of singing, shouting, grunting, and whatever other random noises he makes, helps give the band a bit of their own identity (although, there are a couple of instances where he sounds reminiscent of Korn’s Jonathan Davis).

All the tracks on ‘Shadow Zone’ are very short in duration, with only three of them barely scraping by the four-minute mark by mere seconds, however, this makes the album easy to digest, and while some of the songs are catchier than others, none of them have time to drag on, making this album flow effortlessly. And an abundance of electronic effects give the music a great ambience and vibe.

Songs like ‘Shadow Zone’, ‘Monster’, ‘Destroy All’, ‘New Pain’, ‘Kill Your Idols’, ‘The Only’ and the melodic and eerie ‘So’ are all highlights that make this album worth checking out. While nu metal’s day at the top were Static-X’s best realistic chance at mainstream success, ‘Shadow Zone’ is still a great listen for industrial fans, and any metal fans that like their music intense, heavy and accessible might enjoy this too.

Unitron "Speed toward hell, shed no tears"

By the end of the 90's, there was not an explosion of new fantastic industrial metal bands and albums like there was at the beginning of the decade. Treponem Pal had released their masterpiece "Higher" in '97, which would be their last album for about a decade, and Fear Factory and Rammstein were going strong. That was about it. However, come the year of 1999, and the industrial metal band Static-X unleashed their debut studio album Wisconsin Death Trip to the world.

Static-X brought their own fresh sound to the industrial metal scene, using a blend of the atmospheric heaviness of Fear Factory, the groove and catchiness of a Godflesh beat, and the pulsing EBM/Electro-Industrial of Front Line Assembly. Bringing together all the elements of what makes industrial music so great, while not copying any of these bands is what makes this album have such a winning sound.

As soon as the grooving "Push It" blasts through your speakers, this album doesn't let up until the ambient "December" closes out the album. This is perfect cyberpunk video game music, the kind of stuff that goes perfectly with a game of Quake II or even Doom. That's not to say that it doesn't work on it's own, quite the contrary. Take the mechanical screeching in "Push It" that emulate power drills, or the underlying atmosphere throughout the album, this embraces everything industrial.

Going back to the mention of cyber, the menacing "The Trance is the Motion" showcases an early example of the cyber metal sound. It may take place as my favorite on the album. It is engulfed in a stark atmosphere, screeching and down-tuned riffs, chaotic screams, and has a pretty epic vibe for being only 5 minutes long. It's followed by the fantastic closer of December, which is pretty much completely different from the rest of the album. It's a great Chroma Key-esque ambient rock song that acts as a nice come down. Especially the songs dominated by a massive groove while keeping the futuristic atmosphere. "Stem", "Bled for Days", and the title track are in particular highlights.

Despite the highlights, this is an album that is meant to be listened to all the way through. Each song bleeds into the next, and makes for a good CD to turn on for any occasion that requires a surge of industrial metal goodness. This is a classic album of the industrial genre, and one that the band wouldn't match until 2007's Cannibal. Hope you found this review helpful, feel free to comment!

martindavey87 2001 was the year nu metal fully conquered the world, pushing heavier music to the mainstream and reaching all new heights of popularity. Sadly though, it was a fad that wouldn't last, and any band looking to make an impact had to strike while the iron was hot. For every Disturbed, there was a dozen Spineshank's, for every Korn, there were multiple Adema's. With a cult following building since their 1999 debut, it was now-or-never for Static-X. Go hard or go home.

Which brings us to 'Machine'.

A huge step up from its predecessor, Wayne Static and his ragtag misfits are back with this crushingly brutal yet innocently simplistic assault on the senses. 14 year-old me had never heard anything so aggressive, and to this day, it still amazes me how an album so stripped bare can be so heavy. Sure, it's overproduced to hell and back, with various electronic tracks and effects giving the album such a massive and fat sound, but the compositions themselves are all very laid back, with basic arrangements, no overly complex passages, and barely more than three or four chords in any one song.

It's a classic case of "less is more". And in a case of great timing, the album was released during nu metal's heyday, ensuring it would appeal to a new generation of young metal fans that were introduced to the genre by bands such as Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.

Overall, 'Machine' is an incredibly polished release, with a great sound and some infectious tracks. In particular, 'Otsego Undead', 'Structural Defect', '...In a Bag', 'Machine', and the two hit singles 'Cold' and 'Black and White', are all standout moments that helped firmly establish Static-X as one of the bands that would outlast the nu metal fad, and more importantly, one of the heaviest bands from my childhood.

martindavey87 Static-X's debut album came at a time when the nu metal subgenre was helping heavy metal get its foothold back in the mainstream, and whilst commonly labelled as industrial metal, Wayne Static and his lads were able to easily slip in with the rest of the "nu" crowd and stand out as one of the heavier acts the scene had to offer.

Sadly, that alone won't make them much good.

For all the hype and nostalgia around this release, it isn't really all that impressive, and certainly hasn't aged too well. It's very repetitive, and not very exciting. Almost every guitar riff sounds the same, and whilst there are some fat grooves dotted around, as a whole, it just seems like one of those albums you claim to like, but you're not really sure why.

Wayne Static's mostly incomprehensible vocals and guttural noises wear thin pretty quickly, and there's quite a few "slow" moments on the album that probably detract, more than add, to the dynamics. There are a couple of passable tracks, for example, 'Love Dump' (which to me, was the heaviest song ever when I first heard it way back in the day), 'Bled for Days' and 'Push It' aren't bad... but none of them are really all that memorable, either. Then there's complete tosh like 'December'. Who thought that "song" was a good idea?

'Wisconsin Death Trip' might be worth picking up for the sake of nostalgia, but you'll quickly remember why you forgot about it in the first place.