When it comes to heavy music bass guitarist Tony Campos has one of the best resumes in the business. This is a man who has been a member of Soulfly, Fear Factory, Ministry, Prong, Brujeria to just name a few. Of course he is also a founding member of Static-X and it is for that reason that he chats to HEAVY Mag.
For those that don’t know Static-X are about to release a brand new album and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of their album Wisconsin Death Trip with a tour of Australia… of course HEAVY Mag wanted to be all over that.
“In all started with five demos that Wayne (Static) had done before his passing that he had given to a producer friend of ours,” explains Campos. “He then gave them to me after Wayne had passed and I sat on them for a few years. Then in 2015 I had a lot of down time so I re-visited those songs and started to write music again and that was when I started reaching out to the guys to see if we could do something with the stuff and in the process of reaching out for help with this stuff our original producer put me onto three songs that didn’t make the Start Of War record. So we kept Wayne’s vocal performances and re-worked the music. Then while we were looking for live backing tracks we found another seven or eight songs that Wayne had demoed. Now most of the tracks on this album will feature Wayne’s vocals. It just snowballed into what it is now. Then we figured if we were going to do something then the twentieth anniversary of Wisconsin Death Trip was the right time, so now we are bringing it to the fans one more time.”
“Sad in a way,” he says when i ask what it was like sitting down and listening to Wayne’s demoes after his death. “The guy was so talented, particularly after discovering these vocals tracks I noticed that he was singing a lot more rather than the gruff stuff that he was known for, and when Wayne wanted to sing he could sing – he had an amazing voice. Just to hear that it was like ‘man it is such a shame that because of drugs the world is robbed of that’.”
You can listen to our full interview with Static-X on Spotify.
All the tour dates can be found on this page. Project Regeneration will be released later this year.
