I was fortunate enough to see Static-X five times in the early part of their career but the possibility of seeing them again live disappeared when Wayne Static passed away on November 1, 2014. Then in 2019 it was announced that the original members minus Wayne were getting together with a masked mystery singer/guitarist to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wisconsin Death Trip in honor of Wayne. I was conflicted about seeing this since Wayne was so unique and I was able to see the real thing so many times but then I remembered how great it was to hear STP songs live again with singers other than Scott Weiland. None of my feelings mattered since there were no San Diego dates…until the tour resumed in 2020 with San Diego as the first date.
When I started thinking about how much I love Wisconsin Death Trip and received an email from Brick By Brick announcing there were less than 50 tickets left something finally clicked in my brain and I came around. Unfortunately this being on a Thursday did not make it very easy to find anyone else willing to accompany me so I ended up going alone.
Static-X aside this was an interesting time because I had not had any weed or alcohol in over 30 days after taking a self-imposed break and because Coronavirus panic was taking hold of the world. Bands started cancelling shows and elected officials were putting orders in place to prevent gatherings of more than 250 people, then 50 people and finally 10 people. This show was in question up to the last hours before showtime. Ultimately these gathering restrictions went into place midnight of this night, making this the last show I was going to be able to attend for the foreseeable future.
After returning to my gummy taking ways I arrived at Brick By Brick with exactly enough time to grab a tall boy Modelo and situate myself at the familiar back end of the floor area before Static-X came out. The mystery man, who was later revealed to be Edsel Dope, wore a semi-creepy mask that has X’s through the eyes and on the forehead and must have not had enough time to re-create Wayne’s famous hairdo since he wore a hoodie the whole time. He did an admirable job filling in for Wayne and I thought it was pretty cool of “Xer0” to address the crowd basically saying, “I am not trying to replace anyone. I was friends with Wayne and love these songs as much as you guys so I’m thankful that you are allowing me to be a part of bringing these songs back to life for all of us to enjoy.”
It took all of two songs for them to get to the title track of Wisconsin Death Trip for me to feel really great about my decision to attend. After a fantastic “The Trance is the Motion” they hit the highlight reel of rippers from Machine then hot selections from the rest of the catalog before coming back around to “I’m With Stupid” and “Push It” and then they were gone. All in all the show was badass but they need to fire the sound guy because the performance was great but the actual sound was inconsistent.
Next up in the Static-X orbit is Project Regeneration, which will be new music featuring Wayne’s voice from recordings before his death set to be released later in 2020.
SETLIST: Bled for Days, Wisconsin Death Trip, Sweat of the Bud, Love Dump. I Am, Otsegolation, The Trance is the Motion, Get to the Gone, Black and White, This Is Not, Destroy All, Start a War, Behemoth, Cold, I’m With Stupid, Push It
