Helmet

Noise and rhythm

Unlike most rock music, and the American noise-rock scene to which they belong, Helmet, on their explosive debut "Strap It On" (1990), come armed with a different kind of propulsion: it's John Stanier's drumming that sets the tracks alight, pushing the assault forward, steering the terrifying sonic guerrilla warfare they wage across 30 minutes of visceral intensity.

Drumming in service of the songs, unexpectedly built on groove rather than the virtuosity of speed and variation, offering rhythmic cells essential enough to become the listener's anchor point amid an arrangement besieged by compressed, cacophonous guitars and the far-from-refined vocals of Page Hamilton, somewhere between a raging hardcore bellow and a tortured thrash-metal spasm.

After all, the American band Helmet, formed in 1989 by Hamilton (vocals and guitar; author of the music and lyrics), Peter Mengede (guitar), Henry Bogdan (bass) and John Stanier on drums, sit at the crossroads of various strands of hard rock: hardcore roots, a passion for noise, heavy metal muscle. Listening to them, one can draw a line to Steve Albini's Big Black, abrasive noise-rock that declares nuclear war on your eardrums, but also to the groove-metal of Prong and even certain Pantera moments. The often muted guitar riffs follow Stanier's mechanical rhythmic patterns and alternate with throat-slitting solos, gain cranked to the max, intent on doing as much damage as possible while battering the instrument. The bass locks in with the drums, giving body, one might say weight, to the sound. On top, Hamilton's voice screams, agonizes, thrashes about, recalling the tormented style of Henry Rollins and Black Flag.

Groove and bad temper

The opening "Repetition", on closer listening, already hints at the rhythmic groundwork that puts Stanier center stage, but it's fundamentally a hardcore track, one that finds its turning point in accelerations perfectly suited to the recurring mosh parts. The manifesto of this rhythmic approach to noise-rock finds far more compelling candidates in "Rude" and "Bad Mood", a pairing that defines a hard, negative sound, angry but with no real release.

"Rude" seems poised to explode, yet stays choked, breathless. Once again it's the drums that force the fury of the other instruments into a rhythmic cage. The fills and variations nonetheless lead back to the hammering groove the track is built on. The peak of this frustrated violence crystallizes as Hamilton screams the title, surrounded by tortured electric guitars and, of course, that groove channeling all the energy.

"Bad Mood" is even more direct, in both title and sound: a muted riff and a groove that pounds obsessively, on the verge of derailing but then steered back onto its straight course toward the wall, here represented by a gruesome finale of screams and blaring guitar.

Another killer groove, "Sinatra" adds a sense of desolation to the anguish and offers a more elaborate development, with a second half that's more overtly violent and deafening; given its more intricate nature, it isn't one of this Helmet's typical tracks, even though it's one of the album's high points.

A more typical example is "Blacktop", just slightly more musical, perhaps Stanier's most spectacular moment on the album, with the entire rhythmic skeleton built on a bare-bones drum kit, wrung out to the very limits of its possibilities. When, toward the end, the track seems set to launch into a final, thunderous explosion, everything dissolves back into the lumbering groove, and "Strap It On" can be considered virtually over: the remaining tracks won't add much to this thriller-like grammar.

More method, less instinct

Helmet's debut album is often punishing, crude, unpleasant. Produced on a very modest budget, it runs half an hour but some tracks weren't strictly necessary. The follow-up, "In The Meantime" (1992), pulls them out of that borderline territory and enlists them in metal, albeit an alternative and atypical strain, reworking "Strap It On" in a more professional way, helped along by a tenfold bigger budget. Inevitably, the intensity drops a notch or two, and "Unsung" even has melodic vocals. The production, which involves Steve Albini, gives the instruments more definition and also brings out the bass, which had been all but buried for most of the debut. The more eclectic songwriting, still entirely Hamilton's doing, makes for a more dynamic album, fundamentally less hostile but still plenty powerful. Incredibly, "In The Meantime" will go on to sell something like two million copies, turning Helmet into an unlikely "next big thing".

"Betty" (1994; with a new guitarist) will move even further away from "Strap It On", broadening their language still further. Nothing that replicates the head-on collision with those infernal grooves, which Stanier played with furious, mechanical precision.

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12/04/2026