Static-X is 1 o’ those nu-metal bands from whom I’ve heard a few singles on the radio & in my playlists e’ery so oft, but not much beyond that. That is till now.

We’ve mainly been delving into mo’ traditional spoop with bands like Drowning Pool, Evanescence, &, ’course, the many Disturbed albums; howe’er I think it is now time we venture into the pastures o’ the mo’ robotic, sci-fi-tinted horror that oft comes with industrial bands like Static-X.

I picked Wisconsin Death Trip because it seemed like their most prominent album, with the most singles on it, e’en tho it technically came out in the 90s, in 1999 — & yet it’s not e’en the earliest album I’ve looked @ in this series. Also, Wisconsin Death Trip is the perfect name for a Nostalgic Novelty Noughties Nu-Metal album, ¿for where is there a better place to get cheese in the US than the legendary dairylands o’ Wisconsin?

1. Push It

This was 1 o’ those singles I’d hear e’ery so oft; & it’s easy to see why ’twas a single with its catchy squeaky main riff, the catchy chorus where the singer, Wayne Static, is just saying, “YOU PUSH IT” in a filtered voice & with just a key change halfway thru, the e’en mo’ catchy bridge where the singer chants, “I SEE IT / I NEED IT” with increasing intensity, & the strangely melodic post-bridge where Static chants ’bout the same drugged-up nonsense ’bout a “corrosive mind” as in the verses. This is an unfortunately fitting subject, as apparently Wayne Static would later die o’ a drug o’erdose mo’ than a decade after this album.

Grade: B

Music Video

The music video goes back & forth ’tween a claymation video & the band playing under radioactive green light, with us oft only seeing the shadow o’ Static & his iconic tall Frankenstein monster hair. In fact, it goes back & forth so much that I had trouble following what was going on in the claymation video: it seems a goblin creature steals some mysterious canister o’ green liquid from some office, sits in a chair that spins so fast it rips the skin off said monster revealing a robot ’neath, that robot explores a factory… & then ends up back in the office where it started & kicks a desk o’er. Luckily, nobody cares ’bout the deep story o’ a nu-metal music video, they just want to see cool imagery; & this music video delivers that.

Grade: A

2. I’m With Stupid

This was also a single, but 1 I’d hear less oft. This is too bad, as this is an e’en better song, especially thanks to all the sampling o’ some white trash woman who was apparently on the news after having stopped a robber robbing a neighbor’s house by smashing his head in with a shovel. Yeah, if I wrote for a metal band & I heard a story like that on the news, I’d feel obliged to write a song ’bout it, too. Meanwhile, in the background Static is whisper-shouting, “HE’S A LOOOOSER”, which is hilarious.

The verses, meanwhile, are mo’ drugged-out nonsense — tho a mo’ interesting variety. My favorite is the 1st line o’ the 1st verse: “great pains i’ve gone to gang slang”. Unfortunately, the composer couldn’t seem to think o’ much afterward, as the 2nd verse just repeats, “i am mine” repeatedly & the 3rd verse is just a repeat o’ the 1st verse.

Grade: A

Music Video

@ 1st this music video was starting to disappoint me, as despite the cool story ’hind this song, it started with the band just jamming to a party — albeit a colorful, Halloween-style party to which they enter wearing fine white suits that looked ridiculous in contrast to their strange hairstyles. But then we have the plot twist where some crazy woman with the shovel mentioned so oft in this song chases a robot with an X on its face — the same robot as was in the previous music video, so I’m assuming that’s a mascot o’ theirs — into the woods, where the robot tries to use the outhouse conveniently next to the trailer, only to be ambushed @ attacked by the crazy woman only for it to be revealed that the crazy woman is really Static himself. This music video probably would’ve been better if it stuck to focusing on a crazy woman chasing someone thru some hicktown woods — maybe show her “hogtying” them, as mentioned in the song — but a’least we get something.

Grade: B

3. Bled for Days

This 1 might be e’en better than the previous 2. The main beat & electronic riff sounds better, & I love the robotic monotone o’ Static repeating, “MEANINGLESS IT’S… MEANINGLESS”, only for the repeat o’ this pattern with “uselessness” to be a withering whisper. E’en better than all that is the contrast o’ the verses, which sounds like the robot malfunctioning as it speedily sputters angry words vaguely tied round this song’s theme o’ bleeding & scabbing — which also seems to be ’bout being on drugs.

If that isn’t surreal ’nough, our heroes @ Genius have a special treat for us: a feminist interpretation o’ this song which interprets all this talk ’bout bleeding & emptiness as “a slow but debilitating loss of energy and life force and menstruation”. I’m skeptical; but part o’ me wants to believe in it just ’cause an industrial song ’bout the debilitating loss o’ energy & life force from menstruation sounds like something the world needs.

Grade: A

¿Music Video?

There’s a YouTube video claiming to be the “official video” for this song, but it’s not from an official channel & just looks like a fan recording o’ a live show with inferior audio quality. If it is the official music video, it’s not e’en good ’nough to replace having the official album audio linked in this article.

Grade: N/A

4. Love Dump

I was initially excited when I saw a song named “Love Dump”, with the weird robotic texture to the word “dump”, — as in dumping error logs or something — & eagerly anticipated a surreal song ’bout a romance ’tween computers ending or something, fed by that driving sci-fi beat. But then I got to such poetic lines as, “your shit’s like chocolate cake / & your ass smells like a rose”, & came to the horrified realization that this song was ’bout a love for a different, much mo’ heinous, type o’ dumping o’ error logs.

E’en ignoring that, the song has flaws: the lyrics are way too short for such a long song, so there’s far too much musical amping, which doesn’t work well for a band like this who mainly play simple, repetitive beats that belong in the back. Surprisingly, there isn’t much to the lyrics beyond those 2 lines I said ’bove: the chorus just repeats “hand me a line” several times in what was not Static’s best performance. I’m not sure what that has to do with… anything else in this song. Genius claims that it’s some generic metaphor ’bout the hope that someone will help the protagonist out o’ some bad relationship or something. That would fit much better in a song that wasn’t otherwise ’bout coprophilia. “I’m really in a rough spot… Anyway, your turds are a delicacy to my soul”. The 2nd verse is just 3 lines that have nothing to do with each other, including the vitally important, “now my bowels ache, yeah”. This song sounds like it’s mo’ a shitpost — pun not intended — than a real song.

Grade: 2

5. I Am

I can see that we are not escaping scatology too soon as soon as I hear the 1st poetic line, “butt nut”, followed by mo’ Tourette’s-syndrome induced outbursts in the background, like “fist fuck” & “ass-suck”. Meanwhile, the main lines in the verses themselves are much cleaner & focus more on violence & anger rather than… whate’er the fuck “butt nut” is. A song with such a standard title as “I Am” is somehow the most surreal song I’ve encountered so far, jumping from disparate topic to topic. Only the chorus addresses the title, & it only does so by asserting that the protagonist is ol’ & cynical — not too cynical to get it up to a li’l ol’ fashioned fisting & anus-slurping, tho. Then @ the end we have the protagonist repeating suicidal lines out o’ nowhere, only to abruptly end with the philosophical line, “justice died here”. The 1st 3 songs were about being on drugs; these 2 songs are on drugs.

That being said, I do like the sound o’ this song, especially the drum breakdown round the 3/4th point & the contrast ’tween the speedy verse lines & the growling background lines. Howe’er, the basic screaming o’ the chorus, which is just a slow reciting o’ a line, word by word, is disappointing.

Grade: C

6. Ostegolation

After the previous 2 songs, I’m actually disappointed by how… plain this song is. Like “Love Dump”, this song has sparse lyrics & a lot o’ musical amping; but unlike all the previous songs, this song’s music is just plain annoying with its loud squeaking sound repeating o’er & o’er. Meanwhile, the lyrics are your generic nu-metal angst ’bout annihilation & revolution & feeling & “don’t care at all” & the word “isolation” repeated many times @ the end. Yawn.

Otsego is a town in Minnesota where they have a ritual called Otsegolation where you take a dump in the middle of the road and then put some little goggly eyes on it and give it a pet name like “Sweet Cheeks” or “Colin” and then see how many days it takes for someone to run over it in a vehicle and the last one to not get run over wins.

Genius

Lol, this sounds made-up as fuck. If this is true, it knocks this song down e’en mo’, ¿as how do you make a song ’bout a town like that & just talk ’bout generic angst?

Delving a bit deeper, I found a mo’ believable story from Urban Dictionary o’ all places, which claims that this song is named after a shitty li’l hick town where Static attended college that he found depressing. That makes mo’ sense, but still makes this song weak: think o’ all the imagery you could create surrounding an empty hick town full o’ nothing but dead weeds, rickety shit shacks, & mind-numbing quietude. It should be obvious that just repeating the abstract theme o’ your song — isolation — repeatedly @ the end is straight-up the laziest thing you can do lyrically.

Grade: D

7. Stem

Thankfully, “Stem” is a much better song: it builds up from this surprisingly clean, ethereal music that sounds like it comes from Sonic CD to add on a contrastingly loud catchy bass-heavy beat.

The lyrics also give me exactly what I asked for from the previous song: it’s your typical “I want to commit suicide” nu-metal song, but rather than the kind o’ trite phrases you hear from most songs, this song employs heavy imagery surrounding the “stem” that is their brainstem, whose destruction leads to certain death, with the idea o’ radically destroying one’s own being @ the stem.

Grade: A

8. Sweat of the Bud

This song doesn’t stand out much from Static-X’s main work — a definite deep cut. The electronic riff & beat feels done before & Static robotically announces the lyrics as he usually does, with li’l variation. The lyrics are nowhere near the worst o’ Static-X’s, but feel uninspired. The vague, almost non-English phrase, “not enough to sweat the bud”, is clearly talking ’bout Static-X’s favorite topic, drugs, & this song’s 1 verse, which is repeated 5 mo’ times, is just your average hippie poetics ’bout discovering some imagined deeper meaning thru said drugs with its use o’ stock philosophical phrases like, “search of means to an end” & “looking in from the out”.

Grade: C

9. Fix

I wonder what this song’s ’bout…

Howe’er, this song is much catchier than the previous thanks to its 1 o’, like, 5 lines repeated thruout the song in rapid-fire chants; & while I’d like this song — & most songs on this album — to have mo’ lyrics & less repetition, I honestly empathize mo’ with the talk ’bout tuning in & chilling out than the pseudophilosophical gibberish o’ the previous song.

This main riff isn’t too notable, but there are subtle li’l variations I like, like dropping all but the guitar to let the riff stand alone @ certain points & the weird ghostly laughs after the 2nd chorus.

Grade: B

10. Wisconsin Death Trip

I got my wish from the previous song’s review for mo’ lyrics, & I’m certainly happy for it, for we get some beautifully cheesy lines fitting for a song with the great state o’ Wisconsin in its name like, “don’t you sing dong-ding-dong” & “push it on the phony”. I have no idea what this song is ’bout, besides the theme o’ environmental & societal decay present in “Ostegolation”. This song’s title comes from a book written in the 70s ’bout a bunch o’ crazy crimes & ills that affected a certain part o’ Wisconsin, from disease outbreaks to superstitious hysteria.

Something I have to note is that this song in particular made me realize how good the production on this album sounds with its crisp riffs & sharp drumbeats, which as I oft bemoan, is a rarity for nu-metal, which is oft a victim o’ o’ercompression to the point o’ sounding like digital goop. The main riff is standard quality, but the distorted bass after the 1st chorus &… whate’er the music is during the bridge are highlights for me.

Grade: A

11. The Trance Is the Motion

I don’t remember this song by its title, but I swear I’ve heard its stand-out riff & the chorus. It’s not a single & had no music video, so I’m very doubtful I e’er heard it on the radio.

Anyway, this song is a good contrast to the rest o’ the album, which was beginning to sound a bit too similar @ this point, with its slower musical buildup, with the 1st verse having this great rapid whispered pleading, with the 2nd verse much mo’ desperate in its pleading, building up to a chorus performed in echo-laden screams.

As for the lyrics… it’s probably mo’ pseudophilisophical nonsense, but with much mo’ interesting wording: fewer stock clichés, like talk o’ “means to an end”, & mo’ colorful imagery ’bout “speed toward hell” &, well, the trance being the motion — which is an irony, as trances usually leave one still. But, I mean, depending on the drug, they oft lead one to feel like they’re moving while staying still.

Grade: A

12. December

A nice contrast & a great closer: while the rest o’ this album is noisy rage, this song is mostly a soft elegy to winter & the dead past, chanted with a hoarse but soft voice, full o’ simple imagery o’ the “sun shin[ing] thru the haze” & the closing door o’ time. While the music starts serene, it gradually builds noise & becomes increasingly muffled, as if a snow storm builds thru it, only to devolve into pure mechanical noise @ the end.

Grade: S

Conclusion

Not much mo’ to say ’bout this album. Other than a few peculiar tracks, this is an album & a band in general mo’ interesting to listen to than to review, mainly ’cause this music is mo’ fun electronica you’re meant to just dance to, not hyperanalyze like a pretentious asshole, neither full o’ insights that really needed to be pointed out nor worthy o’ mockery. But I can’t just meme ’bout Disturbed e’ery October & I like giving attention to those middle-popular nu-metal bands that were notable in their day & had a few songs on the radio, but not remembered as heavily now.

Final Grade: B