EDSEL DOPE Wanted To Help Fans Reconnect To STATIC-X 'Without Feeling Guilty About It'

DOPE leader Edsel Dope, who is widely rumored to be Xer0, the masked frontman of STATIC-X, was asked in a new interview with The Adventures Of Pipeman about his role in helping bassist Tony Campos, drummer Ken Jay and guitarist Koichi Fukuda keep the STATIC-X legacy alive. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): " I was always a big STATIC-X fan and the two bands have so much synergy. We both came out in 1999. If you look back at the touring that the two bands did as we were cutting our teeth, aside from Ozzfest, practically every tour that both bands did, we did together. It was like STATIC-X, DOPE, POWERMAN 5000; STATIC-X, DOPE, FEAR FACTORY; STATIC-X and DOPE and SEVENDUST; and STATIC-X and DOPE by ourselves. We did 250 shows together in the span of our first album. That's a lot of connectivity to those same fans. So, I felt like I had a real clear vision as a fan and as a friend and as a band that unlike STATIC-X, who always had a major label, always had a big management firm, without all of that, and especially without their main guy, Wayne [Static] there, they, for a lack of better words, were in very unfamiliar territory. Whereas for me, I had built an independent infrastructure over the last several years. And as a fan of STATIC-X, I looked at it sitting down with Tony and going, 'I think I can help you guys. With the 20 years of building my own independent infrastructure, you can sort of just put this through that same prism. And you guys are very close to this. So I'm sure you've had ideas of how to bring this back. But as a fan of the band, I know what I would like to see.'

"Of course, everything's gonna be received with skepticism and, like, 'I don't know about this,' and there was a lot of that, 'No Wayne Static, no STATIC-X' in the beginning," he continued. "But, again, if you're doing it for the right reasons and you have a vision for something that really can help the music live and can really help people have those experiences… I know how much I miss the band, and I know that I'm one of millions of fans out there that wanted to get fucking hammered and listen to 'I'm With Stupid' loud and live in a room and going, like, 'We're never gonna have those experiences again.' Well, how can we change that and do it in the right way to where people can not feel guilty when they're smiling at a STATIC-X show? Because in the beginning, it's a mourning, it's sad. But that was a big part of it, was to keep throwing as much positive energy and, for a lack of better words, fun at it, because STATIC-X was always such a fun band with fun songs. There's a lot of metal bands that are serious. That wasn't STATIC-X. STATIC-X was always this fun, almost smile-on-your-face metal band. So it was important for us to figure out how to reconnect fans to that and allow them to participate in a STATIC-X experience without feeling guilty about it."

When host Pipeman noted that some bands try to find "replacements" for original singers, Edsel said: "Or they try to move on. They try to rebrand it as something new. And it was, like, STATIC-X is a legacy band, bro. You try to take the legacy out, what the fuck are you doing? You're trying to take the Wayne Static out of STATIC-X, what are you doing? Why would you do that? So I don't know. To me, it wasn't hard. It was just, again, trying to make sure that you really make it fun and let it be about the music. And then, with today's technology, we were able to look at 'evil disco' as something more than a sound and go, 'Well, how do we represent the visual of evil disco?' Because STATIC-X really checked out in, like, 2009. So 10, 12, 15 years of technology development for LED screens and just big production props that didn't really exist back then that you can put through the evil disco filter. And there was a lot of really cool, fun shit to come out of that too. So I couldn't be more proud and more happy for my friends who are able to go out there and continue on with something that they all worked very hard on."

Dope continued: "STATIC-X was — of course, Wayne was the head chef. He was the Gordon Ramsey of it. But if you take any one of those guys away from that first album when the band was really defining their sound, it's not the same band. Imagine 'Wisconsin Death Trip' without Tony Campos's voice and without his low-end thunder. It was a huge part of the sound. Kenny was the guy that got in his car and moved from the Midwest out to L.A. with Wayne to start the band. That's your partner in crime, dude. It doesn't happen without that. And then Koichi came in at the end and was, like, 'Oh, I play guitar, but I do lots of programming.' And he was a big part of that electronic techno rave sound that made 'Wisconsin Death Trip' not just an industrial album, but almost like a techno rave evil disco album. So all four of those guys together are responsible for that sound, and to think that those guys wouldn't be able to go out and celebrate the anniversaries of that album that went platinum, it wouldn't have been fair. So I'm really happy for them because it was such an achievement for all of them. And also for Wayne's family who's been part of this with us the whole time and gets to watch their son's band go to another level, which — and I say this with respect, at the end, Wayne wasn't doing well and the community wasn't really supporting his choices anymore either. And rightfully so. So he's caught up in all of this refound success. And in many ways, it allows us to sort of overlook those darker years at the end where he was kind of phoning it in and didn't really care anymore because he was just caught in another trip. So it's really nice for the legacy of the whole thing that the band has been so successful in bringing it back and bringing it to a new generation of fans that can appreciate it. And I can say this with the most purity in the world that there's no doubt in my mind Wayne Static is more on the minds and in the hearts of the fans than he's ever been. And what more can you ask for than that?"

Back in February 2023, Edsel was asked in an interview with Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio about the decision to keep Xer0's identity "private" and not publicly name the person who has spent much of the last three years performing and touring alongside Campos, Jay and Fukuda. He said: "Really and truthfully, it's not so much about it being private as it is about respecting the brand of STATIC-X and retaining the respect when writing or discussing it. And a good example I can use for that is GHOST. Everybody knows that there's a dude called Tobias that's behind the paint, but when people write about GHOST, they don't call him Tobias; they respect the entity and they call him Papa whatever the fuck he is. And that's because they respect the creative, they respect the artistic integrity of it enough to honor that.

"With STATIC-X, we knew very early on that we were not going to have the overwhelming support of the media and the community," Edsel continued. "And in the world that we live in, most people's goal is not to be supportive; it's to try and tear things down. It's to try and be the one to uncover and let you know that there is no Santa Claus or whatever it is. So, for me, it was more about making sure that STATIC-X was properly represented, because I would never be interested in looking at a photo of STATIC-X or reading a liner note that mentions me as being the singer of STATIC-X. Edsel Dope has no interest in being the singer of STATIC-X. There's one living, breathing singer of STATIC-X, and that's Wayne Static. And then there's a character, an entity, for lack of better words, that was created in order to allow STATIC-X to have a future and to continue and be the legacy act that they are and tour and perform, and we gave that character a name that is respective to STATIC-X and fits the branding of what STATIC-X is, and that's what the importance is. It's the importance of recognizing the character as opposed to recognizing the person behind the character."

Dope added: "You have to understand that if we didn't make that an absolute mission of ours that people would shit all over it and they would have done everything they could to discredit it. And if it wereEdsel Dope singing for STATIC-X, it would be, 'Oh, it's STATIC DOPE.' Or if it was Burton [C. Bell] from FEAR FACTORY, it would be, like, 'Oh, STATIC FACTORY.' It's, like, 'Go fuck yourself.' You can't give people the ability to control your narratives or else they're gonna control it in the worst fucking way possible, because, for whatever reason, that's the culture that we currently exist in. If it was 25 years ago, we wouldn't have any of this mess because we'd call the editor of fucking Rolling Stone magazine and go, 'Hey, dude, we're gonna let you in on what's happening,' and they would go, 'Oh, this is great,' and they would get behind it and they would properly help you tell your story to the world. But in the world that we currently live in, that's not the goal. The goal is, as I said, to be the naysayer and to be the one who lets you in on the fact that there is no Santa Claus and ruins the parade for everybody because they're just dicks."

When Erickson noted that social media has given everyone a voice, which in turn has turned out to be more of "negative than a positive", Dope concurred. "A hundred percent," he said. "And it's not just the people on the message boards. It's the people that deliver the news too. And it's really sad because heavy metal, whatever you wanna call it, we're absolutely the minority when it comes to the overarching pie of music listeners. There's no doubt that heavy metal music is a much smaller demographic than pop music or rap music or any of those things. So you would think that the news outlets that are popular for being the news-gathering outlets for this type of music, you would think that they would go more out of their way to paint artists in this genre in a more favorable light. But if you notice, half their goal is to rip everybody down, half their goal is to create drama for clicks or to put the worst picture that they can of Sebastian Bach up when they talk bad about him, or whatever it is; they just have these motives. Why would you do nothing but tear down the artists in the genre that's already struggling so hard to stay alive? Why wouldn't you paint those artists in a better light? Why wouldn't you be more supportive? Everything's a joke; everything's a dig. It doesn't mean that I have thin skin — I have thicker skin than fucking anybody — it just means that I don't understand the motive behind it except for that you're just a money-grubbing scumbag who wants clicks. Meanwhile you'll rip on everybody else's integrity, but what are you doing? You're not doing anything for the betterment of the cause. All you're doing is pitting people against each other and tearing a community down to a lower spot. It makes no sense to me."

Circling back to the original question, Edsel said: "So, unfortunately, we had to take this approach with STATIC-X and with the character of Xer0 to avoid people from spinning their own narratives and turning it into something that was different from what it actually was. I think we've accomplished that. And again, I say the same thing: Edsel Dope has absolutely no desire to be known as the singer of STATIC-X; it's not my gig. You wanna talk to me about the creative process? All day long I'll talk about producing the records, I'll talk about being their friend, I'll talk about managing the band and the strategy that goes into it and the infrastructure of starting their own label. Because STATIC-X is a band that up until 'Project Regeneration', every album that they ever released was on a major label — it was either on Warner Brothers or on Reprise. Whereas DOPE became an independent band very early in my career, so I was able to go and build an independent infrastructure and understand how all that works. But my friends in STATIC-X had no fucking clue; they don't know how to run a record label, [and] they don't know how to run their own business. So when I'm sitting in a room with them and going, 'Guys, if we're gonna do this, this is the most logical way to do it to remove the gatekeepers from in between you and your fans,' they had somebody to rely on that had that experience and had that infrastructure and wherewithal.

"So it's been super beneficial for all of us," Dope added. "And we were always friends, but now we're like the best of friends. And we owe each other a lot. I'm grateful for the opportunity because without those guys and the years of work they put into building STATIC-X, I wouldn't have a project to land all those efforts too. And for them, without my efforts to help them survive and exist in the modern day, they would have this band that is no longer around. For lack of a better word, we literally brought STATIC-X back from the dead. And it took all
of us to do it."

STATIC-X's eighth studio album, "Project Regeneration: Vol. 2", was released in January. The LP is a collection of songs that contain the final vocal performances and musical compositions of Static, along with the original "Wisconsin Death Trip" lineup featuring Campos, Fukuda and Jay. The new album was produced by Xer0 and mixed/mastered by longtime collaborator Ulrich Wild.

All of the music associated with "Project Regeneration: Vol. 2" is the result of collaborations between the four founding members along with their new vocalist/guitarist/producer Xer0. No additional guests appear on the album and there were no outside contributions to the songwriting, musical compositions, or the performances on "Project Regeneration: Vol. 2". Between the two releases, STATIC-X fans around the globe have been treated to over two dozen brand new songs — most of which feature Static on lead vocals — and all released after his untimely passing.