STATIC-X will release a new album titled "Project Regeneration", featuring the last recordings of the band's late frontman Wayne Static, on May 29, 2020. The rest of the group's original lineup — bassist Tony Campos, drummer Ken Jay and guitarist Koichi Fukuda — will also be featured on the album and in the music videos, including the promotional clip for the single "Hollow", which can be seen below. The teaser, which was directed by STATIC-X's touring vocalist Xer0 and co-directed by Matt Zane, also features a snippet of the band's hit song "Push It", re-recorded in 2019 with Xer0. "Project Regeneration" will include 12 brand new STATIC-X songs, featuring lead vocals by Static on nearly every track. Last year, STATIC-X released a teaser featuring clips from a brand-new music video, as well as five new STATIC-X tracks — "Road To Hell", "Something Of My Own", "Terminator Oscillator", "Hollow" and "Disco Otsego" — along with a personal message from Campos about the inspiration behind "Project Regeneration". While the identity of STATIC-X's touring singer has not been officially revealed, strong rumors suggest that DOPE frontman Edsel Dope is the one performing with Jay, Fukuda and Campos and appearing in all of STATIC-X's promotional videos. Campos spoke with Australia's Heavy magazine about how the idea for "Project Regeneration" first came about. He said: "It all started with five demos that Wayne had done shortly before his passing that he had given to a producer friend of ours, who then gave them to me after Wayne had passed. I sat on them for a few years. I think it was, like, 2015 [when] I had a lot of downtime, so I revisited those songs and started writing music again. That's when I started reaching out to the guys to see if we could do something with this stuff. In the process of reaching out for help with this stuff, our original producer, Ulrich Wild, he turned me on to three songs that didn't make the 'Start A War' record, and so we kept Wayne's vocal performances, reworked the music, so we had these three songs with Wayne's vocals and one of those original demos had Wayne's vocals on them, so we had four songs with Wayne's vocals on them. Then, shortly after that, while looking for live backing tracks, we discovered another seven or eight songs that Wayne had demoed, I'm guessing, around the 'Shadow Zone' / 'Start A War' era. A lot of that stuff was just the vocal tracks. The music that he had written along with that stuff was missing. We couldn't find the tapes that had the music, so we had to write all new music for that stuff. Now it's turned into the majority of the songs on this record will feature Wayne's vocals. It's kind of snowballed into what it is." According to Tony, the direction of the album has changed significantly since it was first announced. "Because the majority of stuff we had at the time we announced [the album] didn't have vocals on them, the initial idea was to have all these guest singers come in, but since discovering all this other material, the need for guest vocalists has decreased. As of now, the only guest vocal performance on the record will be Al Jourgensen from MINISTRY... The two bands that STATIC-X ripped off the most were MINISTRY and PRONG, so to have Al sing on a song, I know that if Wayne was here, he would be just as stoked as I am." Regarding the album's recording process, Tony said: "Obviously, it's different because Wayne isn't around, but in some ways, it was like working with Wayne. All the songs that eventually made 'Wisconsin Death Trip', the way those came about, Wayne would come into the rehearsal room with a guitar riff and an idea on the drum machine, and we would all jam stuff out. That's kind of how we started with these demos — [they] were just a guitar riff or two, a drum machine program, a keyboard part, and we had to build the songs from that. It was like the way we built songs for that first album, so in that respect, it was like working with Wayne again." Wayne Static died after mixing Xanax and other powerful prescription drugs with alcohol, according to the coroner's report. The 48-year-old Static, whose real name was Wayne Richard Wells, was found dead in his Landers, California home on November 1, 2014. Static founded STATIC-X in 1994 and achieved commercial success with "Wisconsin Death Trip", which included the rock radio hit "Push It". The group issued five more studio albums before disbanding permanently in June 2013. Static had been pursuing a solo career at the time of his death.
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