Wayne Static died on November 1, 2014, leaving behind music built on an unlikely but effective combination: the insistence of dance beats, heavy guitar riffs and his clipped, abrasive voice. As Static-X’s singer and guitarist, he helped turn evil disco into a musical identity. “Push It,” from the band’s 1999 debut, Wisconsin Death Trip, brought those ingredients together in one compact introduction.
Born Wayne Richard Wells in Muskegon, Michigan, he approached that music with a willingness to simplify. In a 2005 interview with The Vindicator, Wayne recalled the beginnings of Static-X around a $60 drum machine pushed to its fastest setting. The musicians had spent years working on elaborate songs and technical solos before deciding to throw that approach away. Disco offered another starting point: accelerate the rhythm and “change the keyboard part to a guitar part.” His account made clear how much enjoyment went into music that sounded so aggressive. The goal had become finding a groove and making it hit harder.
That approach could carry a darker mood, too. The touring that followed the debut fed directly into Machine, the band’s second album, released in 2001. Wayne told Billboard that he had written every song on his sampler in the back lounge of the tour bus. The road supplied the subject matter as well as the workspace. “This Is Not” came from a period when he felt exhausted and depressed, wanted to go home and had lost his enthusiasm for touring. He described the record as heavier and darker than its predecessor, with no intention of pursuing a pop crossover.
Making music under his own name gave him a chance to change the process again. For his 2011 solo album, Pighammer, Wayne wrote and recorded at Giant Rock Studio near Joshua Tree, playing all the instruments and producing the record with engineer Jack Keener assisting. His wife, Tera Wray, contributed female vocal parts. He explained to Guitar World that Static-X songs had normally passed through demos, band rehearsals and a later studio session, with other musicians altering or adding parts along the way. Recording as he wrote let him preserve the excitement of a new idea before it went through those stages. The distinction mattered to him: he could finish a performance while the song was still taking shape. He also told Loudwire that he wanted to return to the electronic elements mixed with metal that had been central to his original vision for Static-X.
Those unfinished ideas and recorded performances took on a different meaning after his death. On 2020’s Project Regeneration, Vol. 1, bassist Tony Campos, guitarist Koichi Fukuda and drummer Ken Jay returned to work with recordings Wayne had left behind. Producer Ulrich Wild also rejoined the process.
Completing that material required the band to rethink how a Static-X song came together. Campos told Loudwire that Wayne had once arrived at rehearsal with drum-machine programming and a riff or two, adding vocals later. For many of the recovered recordings, his voice was already there and the musicians had to build the accompaniment around it. The finished album gave those performances a place in completed songs, with Wayne’s phrasing helping determine the music his bandmates played.
