HYLI Vol. XLV - Static-X and The Strokes
Patrick sends Andy some 2000s indie-rock from a band you've probably heard of and Andy sends Patrick some butt-rock.
Boy oh boy. What a week. I saw some movies this weekend. The Menu (rocked) and She Said (didn’t really rock but was *better*). It’s a great time to go to your local cineplex. Y’all see this shit with Bob Iger/Disney? Real succession vibes over there. I look forward to resigning as head of Hope You Like It LLC. and then using the press (whatever replaces Twitter) to talk hot shit on Andy’s new partner before I get my job back (Andy: I’ll replace you with a toddler and get more views). Did any new albums come out last week? It seems like this is the first year in a while where The Bands and Musicians decided to be kind and not drop anything after I finished my EOTY list. Y’all ready for List Season? I can feel it coming, it’s in the air. Hope You Like It.
Static-X - Start A War
Andy: Static-X was an essential band in my early years, as they were for many people my age getting into metal. Wisconsin Death Trip and Machine are Nu-metal classics. I feel like most people, myself included, in their 20s decide that the music they grew up on isn’t cool or good anymore and get really into black and doom metal (Patrick: Oasis is better than black metal, I’ll still be saying this when I’m dead). At some point in your 30s you realize those bands are actually great and aren’t afraid to admit it. Anyway, yeah, I made a meme. Enjoy it. I’ll never do it again (Patrick: was it worth it?).
Start A War isn’t the band’s best album, but one I find to be extremely underrated. It isn’t as crazy as the first few albums, leaning a little closer to alt-metal with less aggressive and experimental programming (a part I do miss on this. Wayne does a lot with programming on the first two albums that are a blast. It is missed here.) But the trade-off is some really catchy, fun songs. Wayne Static is a fantastic songwriter for this genre. He’s never gonna make a “best songwriter” list or anything but for this style of metal, you cannot really do better than him. Simple, fun, straightforward songs. Earlier albums are ‘heavier’ and more experimental but I don’t think this album gets the love it deserves.
Wayne Static’s vocals are an iconic part of a Static-X song - both his unique highs and lyric repetition are the core Static-X formula. It works so well that the band was able to do a weird hybrid release in 2020 with unreleased songs from Static (who passed in 2014) and new songs featuring an incognito vocalist wearing a mask of Wayne Static’s face (Patrick: huh?). Hm.
I’m really interested to see Pat’s take on the closer “Brainfog.” There is a whole genre of drumline lead metal that hasn’t been explored and someone needs to do it. Song is the definition of fun. “Ostigo Amigo” is the most “classic Static-X” song on this album. You get some blast beats, some deep Static vocals, and instead of a classic movie sample you get bassist Tony Campo yelling some shit at you in Spanish.
Part of me thinks Patrick will have a lot of fun with this and enjoy it. The other part thinks I’ll get three paragraphs about why I’m a bad friend who made him listen to this garbage. Who knows. Hope He Likes It Cause Its Good.
Patrick: Andy likes to fool you good people into thinking he’s some metal boy who only listens to metal and nothing but metal. I am not fooled. I know who he is in his heart. He’s a 55-year-old with a Harley Davidson, a goatee with some beads in it, and a chain wallet (Andy: Jesus, man). This album, while not bad, did not sound like metal at all to my ears. It sounded like butt-rock (not a dig!) (Andy: oh yeah I don’t disagree. This is butt-metal for sure). It was closer to Three Days Grace than anything we’ve done in nearly 50 volumes of HYLI prior to this week (Andy: I also don’t disagree but come on man. Have some respect for both of us.)
Again, I don’t think being butt-rock is necessarily a bad thing. I might be the last Chevelle fan remaining (Andy: Excuse me I’m here thanks). I paid dollars when I was a teenager and making like $5 an hour at Target to go see Finger 11 (Andy: Is that a band… or like… a sex thing?) (Patrick: they’re a band, don’t kink shame though). I have the reps in the butt-rock space to be able to respect bands that make butt-rock, like Static-X. “Pieces” reminded me of Korn and stuff I’d listen to in the car on the radio in Rockford, IL. before I had a smartphone. The chorus kinda goes. The solo shreds, some kinda Tom Morello-styled octave effects going on in there. “Just in Case” might have been my favorite, it sinks into kind of a mid-tempo groove in the hook that differentiates from the rest of the stuff here, but is maybe the most butt-rock sounding song on the album. “I Want to Fucking Break It” kinda sounded like butt-rock Refused, which is to say it sounded like the last two Refused albums.
Some of the others didn’t work for me as much. Honestly, the stuff where they strayed more from butt-rock and tried to be a bit more metal-based didn’t really work for me (Andy: I do not think you will enjoy the first two albums then). I was listening to this for the third time while on a run this morning and I passed Adam Lazzara’s house when “Start a War” came on. We are neighbors. I haven’t spoken to him. My wife points out that he lives there every time we pass his house. What’s going on there? Anyways, he was in his yard as I was running and it made me imagine Taking Back Sunday covering “Start a War,” which made me laugh. A hilarious mental image. That song kinda sucks (Andy: It does not). Generally, I don’t like the super-programmed/synthy moments here. Mr. Static’s voice doesn’t work for me doing the higher-pitched, blindingly fast scream stuff. “Ostego Amigo” kinda sounds like a Harms Way song but seems stuck between butt-rock and going all out. A lot of the more metal tunes here don’t feel metal enough. Like, they either needed to just accept they’re a butt-rock band and make radio-core or go way heavier. Why is there a high-school marching band drumline song at the end of this album? Be serious (Andy: It literally rules).
In any case, I liked this album more than I anticipated. I like butt-rock. It can be good. I wish my friend Andy would be honest with himself and admit he likes butt-rock too. This is butt-rock. I Liked It Kinda. (Andy: So we both like this album for the exact opposite reasons. Nice. I think our marriage together will last.)
The Strokes - The New Abnormal
Patrick: Where to begin with this band. Room on Fire came out shortly into my freshman year of high school. I went to four different high schools in four years (oh, memories of being an Army brat), and that particular year I was living in New York State near Syracuse, a cursed part of the country. I was too young to drive and too old to be riding the fucking bus with a bunch of dweebs. So, naturally, I forced friends of mine that had older brothers or sisters to take pity on me and drive me to school with them. Most of the older siblings had enough sense to let my friends or I choose what we wanted to listen to for the ten or so minute drive, mostly just so we would shut the fuck up and not be annoying, but my one friend Joe’s brother Alex would not abide by that. I mostly didn’t mind because he turned me onto some cool shit, like The Strokes. I recall freezing my fucking ass off and hopping into his car when the little solo riff before the chorus of “Reptilia” was playing, setting my stuff down on the back seat, and being like “what the fuck is this!!” and him being like “you don’t know the Strokes???” and rolling his eyes. I was in the back seat of the car but I can promise you there was an eye roll.
Anyways, this moment kinda began what is now a lifelong fandom of The Strokes, for me. The stock price on my fandom hasn’t always been great (remember Angles?), but it has remained constant through the years. The New Abnormal is, at this point, probably my second favorite album by the band but easily, imo, the most interesting. Some of these songs sound like Abba With Guitars, some of them sound like classic The Strokes but played by 40-year-olds instead of 20-year-olds (Andy: This is exactly what I took away from it with knowing basically nothing about them). I don’t watch baseball but I know I love “Ode to the Mets.” I’m told the Mets suck. That song does not suck. “The Adults Are Talking” is a much better song than any band 20 years into their career has any right to make. What a fucking hook. The solo? Nutso.
People talk about the guitars on The Strokes a lot. Rightfully so. Albert Hammond Jr. is a great rhythm player and Nick Valensi is Hot. It makes sense. But, to me, the bass is where it is at with this band. The playing on this album isn’t as showy as it has been on past albums but the way the bass is mixed makes it feel like it’s the only part of the song that matters. This is especially felt on “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus.” The part isn’t that special but you can feel it so prominently. There’s a kind of Paul Simonon-styled groove to the part on “Eternal Summer” too. I love it. This album rocks. I feel like Andy might hate Julian’s voice here but I hope he doesn’t. I Hope He Likes It.
Andy: Perhaps it is surprising to most of you that I actually have some background knowledge of The Strokes (Patrick: oh?). It is limited to the song “Reptilia” from the album Rock Band on the Xbox360, but I know it and I know it well (Patrick: lol I literally said to my wife, who has only shown interest in this newsletter when I mentioned The Strokes, that Andy would only know them because Rock Band, I know you so well dude). I definitely would not go into my Best Buy and play “Reptilia” on Rock Band on Expert until there was a crowd of people around me amazed by my 100%ing of the song. It only happened once and I was never able to recreate the magic. Anyway, that song is great and fun as hell to play.
I wasn’t super surprised when I enjoyed this album as much as I did. All of the fun that they had on the guitar on “Reptilia” can be found on The New Abnormal. I listened to the “Reptilia“ album (Patrick: it’s called Room on Fire and it’s great) a couple of times at my Rock Band peak and I enjoyed it. Apparently, people were stoked that this album was good and felt it was a ‘return to form’ somewhat. As someone who has only done these two it just seems like Room on Fire 2 (We Are Older Now) and that is fine in my book.
Guitar work is so fun on this album. I love the goofy licks and rhythm on “Why Are Sundays So Depressing.” “Eternal Summer” has some great guitar work. So does “The Adults Are Talking.” Actually, they are all fun I won’t list each song. Whole album gets a “This Goes Hard” sticker from yours truly. Lyrics, as always, don’t really matter but the vocals are interesting and enjoyable enough to keep this butt-rock/metal lover attentive. I like when he gets all high-pitched and wily.
There is a weird, non-blastbeat-loving version of me that exists in the multiverse where I got really into this type of guitar work and strayed in the direction of The Strokes instead of metal, I’m sure of it (Patrick: that multiverse version of you is named Patrick Haynes and he’s your friend). So much of this newsletter is me listening to something where I have to “learn” (for lack of a better word) how to enjoy it but this was as easy as anything I normally listen to. Very much my jam.
I guess I just straight up loved this album? It is probably in the top handful of albums that Pat has recommended here. I Liked It Very Much.