Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m in a bad mood after having to sit through the soul-destroying commercial streak of shit-smeared emptiness that is the recent Mamma Mia! film – you think Wayne Static is the worst vocalist you’ve ever heard? You, my friend, have not heard Pierce Brosnan attempting to sing and sounding more like a seal having its throat slit. The fact is, however, that the more I listen to Cult Of Static, the more I hate it. I’ve never been the band’s biggest fan, admittedly, but in the past they’ve had their moments, especially on debut Wisconsin Death Trip and 2007’s Cannibal, and let’s face it, if you switch your brain off you can nod along with anything in the background. Compared to Cult Of Static, however, either of those two albums are masterpieces, classics of the genre, fit to be praised to the skies. Static-X album number six, you see, is simply boring; the songs all sound similar, there’s none of the mild Thrashy heaviness of Cannibal or even the Alt-Metal bludgeoning of Wisconsin... it’s dance music with distorted guitars at best.

The main problem with the ‘music’ here (note the inverted commas; I have a hard time accepting the modern sort of identikit dance music as anything worthy of notice) is, as ever, Wayne Static. Where to start? His monotonous barking voice, which I now find genuinely annoying? His stupid haircut, stupid back in 1994 or whenever they formed and now many times as stupid fifteen years later? The fact that his guitar playing is exactly the same Nu-Metallish crunch as it was originally, showing exactly zero progression in all this time? Making a bid for underground approval by incorporating guitar solos into your music might be a good idea except for the fact there are so few here, and, you know, we undergroundsters actually know what good solos are. There are no songs that are particularly good here; one or two making me nod along in a depressed manner, somewhat like a junkie trying to count cars at the side of a busy road. But then there are the others... must I say that Z28 is more Pop-Punk than Metal? Is it genuinely a surprise to people that the likes of Terminal bounce along like one of Korn’s more ‘experimental’ moments? Whether they were originally part of the Nu Metal scene or not, it seems that’s the direction they’re going for now.

Wait, what? You need more? Ok, after making sure you’re alone in the house, google “Tera Wray” for yourselves. Yeah, Wayne Static’s ‘ugly pornstar wife’, as one forumite recently put it, someone apparently deserving of not one but two songs dedicated to her in the forms of Tera-Fied and Stingwray, both of which suck as hard as she no doubt used to do. Whilst you’re thinking on that, no doubt nervously locking the door in case someone catches you ‘thinking’, here’s a little bombshell to shock you into even more of a nervous state...

Ready? Here it is. You know on the dreadfully dull opening track Lunatic, there’s a solo that sounds suspiciously decent and is nearly enough to make you think that the album might be better than you thought? Right, well that solo is provided by a guest guitarist. Yes, it’s Dave Mustaine, freely squandering the little dignity he has left, and all I can say, Dave, is that the new Megadeth album had better be seriously fucking good, a goddamn masterpiece, because this is very nearly a bridge too far. You wouldn’t get Schmier guesting on a bloody Slipknot album, would you? Tom Angelripper popping up on a Korn album? Well, you might catch Kirk Hammett fraternising with rappers, but we thought you were better than that, Dave! What’s happened? Have Rotting Christ stopped replying to your voicemail messages?

Annoyingly, Cult Of Static isn’t so poor that I can Crap Of The Month-erise it, but it is so shockingly bland and dull that only extreme fans of the band should bother with it. That’s presumably what the album title refers to, another offering to Static-X’s rabid fanbase who have so little concern for musical quality that they’ve become a cult. A cult large enough to place this album at number 16 on the Billboard 200, depressingly. Is there even a point to life anymore?