The purple and orange house lights were fixed on the band as they practiced “Otsego Undead,” a track from their sophomore album, Machine. It was 4:30 p.m., sound check time for Static-X.

At first glimpse of the new drummer, Nick Oshiro (formerly of South African band Seether) seemed to outdo the rest of the band, but the show had yet to begin.

“He’s getting along great. We rag on him and he rags on us like he’s been part of the band forever.” said Tony Campos, bass player. “Nick just adds a whole other energy to the stuff, he just adds a lot a different parts to the [music] and brings a little more life into it. Just adds that much more energy to it.”

Energy doesn’t even begin to describe it, as Static-X is well known for their pumping force that comes with their live shows. While Tony and Tripp (guitar) run from left to right switching places and taunting the crowd with quirky stage antics, Wayne simply bobbed his head to the music and started the show with their first big platinum selling single, “Push It.”

This energy is extremely evident when one soaks in the audience only to watch them pulsing together with the fast industrial beats. The vibe radiates not only from the pit, but also from the entire venue.

Complete with hair-raising vocals and a black and white striped T-shirt, Wayne Static, came in with the opening verse for their current single, “The Only.” Even though the new song is rather slow paced and melodic for Static-X, the crowd loves it.

“[The fans] have been diggin’ ’em. We’re playing three new songs on the set, and yeah, they’re getting down, getting’ off on ’em,” Campos said. “There’s just a matter of us trying to do something different that wasn’t done. Just pushing ourselves to experiment more and trying to do things differently.”

The band performed four songs from the new record: “Destroy All,” “Kill Your Idols,” “The Only” and the title track, “Shadow Zone.” Then there is the question of who made the decision to actually sing on Shadow Zone: Campos said, “It came from the track Wayne did on the Queen of the Damned soundtrack, where he actually had to sing and it ended up sounding really good. Like hey, who knew [he] could sing? So we were like ‘hey let’s try that.’ People are diggin’ it.”

As the set ended with an encore of “Get to the Gone,” the classic tune Static-X always ends with since the Machine tour, the fans are left to wonder in their appropriate post-show apocalyptic daze, what exactly does Shadow Zone mean?

“Supposedly the ‘shadow zone’ is the time between when you get bitten by a vampire but you’re not quite a vampire yet,” Campos said, “The Shadow Zone.”

It’s a record that is meant to be standard in everyone’s collection. “Go buy the damn record and listen to it. If you don’t like it, take it back and ask for your money back,” Campos said.